


And The Static That Glows

by stereomer



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-20
Updated: 2012-03-20
Packaged: 2017-11-02 06:11:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 46,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/365814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stereomer/pseuds/stereomer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bob as Frank's guardian angel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**PROLOGUE**  
  
  
Brian clicks the pen nib out and starts scribbling down information in messy capital letters. “You get hurt all the time, man, what the fuck. I’m pretty sure most of the doctors here know you by name.”  
  
“I know,” is all Bob grunts.   
  
“’Reason for visit’,” Brian reads out loud. “’My soundguy is a dumbass’,” he narrates, slowly pronouncing each syllable as he writes.  
  
“A brave dumbass,” Bob corrects boredly. “Don’t sell me short, dude.”  
  
Brian rolls his eyes. “Yeah, well, next time you smell smoke, just pull the alarm and get an electrician in there. I mean, I get that you have a huge martyr complex or something, but don’t stick your hand into the source of a  _fire_.” He efficiently fills out the rest of the form and hands the clipboard to Bob with another impatient roll of his eyes. “We’ve been waiting for over an hour. Hurry up and sign it so they don’t have any more excuses.”  
  
Bob withdraws a hand from the bucket of ice, fists the pen, and manages to sign something that looks more like a rhombus instead of his name, but Brian drags the clipboard away and gets up to return it to the droopy-eyed nurse behind the window. Honestly, Bob doesn’t know who the fuck he pissed off in a former life to keep getting shit on by medical bills and temporary disabilities in this present lifetime.   
  
Surprisingly enough, the waiting room at the ER is pretty empty – the only other people in it besides Brian and Bob are a teenage boy who sounds like he has a cesspool in his lungs, his mother, a construction worker with a bloody shirt wrapped around his hand, and an old lady wearing vision-impaired sunglasses. Bob doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with her vision, though, since she’s been smiling toothily at him ever since he and Brian had walked in. He awkwardly scratches his ear with the back of his wrist, trying to silently will her to look somewhere else but that doesn’t work, so he darts his eyes around and catches sight of Brian, who now has one arm outstretched behind him and is pointing emphatically at Bob while carrying on a hissing argument with the nurse.   
  
Bob sighs. Brian could be the most loyal, nicest guy ever, but he also had this weird ability to start shit with anyone on the entire goddamn planet. If Bob’s around as a witness, he’s usually good about putting a stop to it before people threaten to press charges or whatever, but right now, the burns on his skin are making his hands feel increasingly like two big pieces of ham and he’s really not in the mood to get up and make an effort to deflect Brian’s righteous anger elsewhere.   
  
On top of all that, Bob notices that the old lady is  _still_  staring at him. Even though he tries to tell himself he’s just being a fucking wimp, it’s getting more than kind of unnerving; the back of his neck feels all tingly and exposed and it’s a struggle not to get up and move somewhere else.   
  
As a distraction, he pulls both hands from the ice to examine the damage: the skin from his wrists to mid-forearm is covered in patches of slick, shiny red, and resembles lobster claws more than human hands. Plus, the big bruise on the back of his neck is still in its tender stages and there’s a fresh scrape on his hip from a doorway that had seemed to jump out of nowhere earlier in the day.   
  
The harsh lights of the hospital start getting to Bob’s eyes, so he closes them and leans his head back, thinking about the times when he’d survived without injury for years at a stretch. Shit, he’d even played organized sports in high school and half of college without missing a season. But Brian’s right – nowadays it seems like Bob is on first-name basis with half the doctors in the county.   
  
“Come on.”   
  
Bob squints his eyes open and sees Brian looking down at him with a triumphant expression. Over his shoulder, Bob can see that the nurse’s head looks like it’s going to explode from pent up rage, which kind of sucks because the last thing Bob probably needs is to piss off the hospital staff.   
  
“They’ll see you now, come on.” Brian prods Bob’s shin with the toe of his shoe.  
  
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to argue with nurses? They’re going to send messages through the secret underground hospital network and I’m going to leave here without arms or something,” Bob complains, but he gets up and follows Brian through the sliding double doors leading into the maze of the hospital.   
  
On the way, he checks over his shoulder to see if the nurse is still giving him a death glare and inadvertently catches the not-so-blind old lady watching him go instead. When their eyes lock, Bob balks at the sensation that his skin is crawling in on itself, even though – or maybe because – half her face is still hidden behind the huge sunglasses. What the fuck.  
  
“Dude,” Bob mutters without moving his lips. He edges forward. “Dude, Brian.”  
  
But Brian is already a few paces ahead of him and either doesn’t hear or just ignores him. The doors finally shut with a whoosh as Bob steps clear of the sensor range, successfully putting a solid block between the hospital and the waiting room and sequestering him safely in the sterile, harshly lit hallway. By this time, his hands are starting to seriously hurt, so he keeps following Brian to the end of the hallway where he’s met with doctors and options for burn treatments and the usual barrage of questions and a string of other distractions that finally lets the residual image of the old lady fade away from his memory.  
  
  
*****  
  
  
Despite the horrifyingly unnatural color of the burns, Bob’s skin begins to heal pretty quickly and he’s back on the job for the first time a week later. Once there, he kind of regrets brushing aside Brian’s objections about coming into work because it’s turned out to be one of those nights when Bob just wants to say, “fuck it,” flip off the house lights, and head home even though there’s about a metric shit-ton of work left to do.   
  
Due to budget cuts a few months ago, Brian had rearranged the schedule so that there was the barest minimum of staff around for any given task. Tonight being the last Friday of the month, everyone else had taken off after the show with plans to crawl through the city, getting progressively drunker as they made their way downtown. Meanwhile, Bob has been stuck cleaning the last of the mess at the club by himself and is currently holding so many coils of cords and cables that he feels like he’s become Medusa’s personal hairdresser.   
  
He doesn’t actually mind being left alone to clear up as long as he doesn’t have to Swiffer the whole fucking place or anything, but the thing is, the club at two in the morning is way different from the club at 11:00pm. The stifling body heat from the show has long since filtered out through the windows and cracks in the molding, leaving a slight chill in its wake, and the silence buzzes loudly as if to compensate for the blistering music that had overpowered the room a couple hours ago. It’s all still and quiet and Bob keeps getting this weird prickly feeling right behind his ear, like there’s dust being blown over his skin, and he’s not quite convinced that it’s just the air getting colder. Even though the paranoia is probably flaring up because he’s alone, he’s kind of glad no one’s there to see him whip around every few minutes, half-expecting some psycho to be standing in the shadows and watching him in the reflection of a butcher knife.   
  
Bob starts whistling and humming to himself as he hangs up cable after cable on the corresponding hooks in the wall, to push out the silence but also out of habit. Even as a kid, he’d made his mom sing the alphabet from the top of the stairs while he ran down to get a cup of water in the middle of the night, convinced that the sound of her voice would make him invulnerable to whatever monsters might have been lurking in the dark.   
  
Time passes relatively quickly after that, and soon there are only a couple cables left – the two longest ones snaking from one end of the small backstage to the other. He unplugs one and starts winding it into a loop around his palm and the crook of his elbow while slowly walking across the room. The plug itself seems to be held together mostly by duct tape as bare wires bloom all over the place like fucked up bouquets. Even the duct tape is falling apart, existing more as exposed thread rather than adhesive. Bob rolls his eyes and makes a mental note to complain to Brian. Again. Yeah, there were budget issues, but shit, this was sort of pushing it.   
  
He’s trying to think of the cross-street for the nearest Guitar Center when his heel touches down on a puddle of a spilled drink; he takes another step forward even as his brain starts to send warning signals down to his legs. Before he can work it out consciously, the cord drags through the liquid, there’s a sudden surge through his entire body and a feeling like someone has just pushed him off a cliff; a jolt and a freefall, and –   
  
  
  
  
– several white lights, and then he sees billowing curtains hanging in midair as a fresh scent of flowers wafts through.   
  
It’s confusing. It should also be at least a little alarming, but Bob mostly just feels like he’s been shot full of Novocaine and can only muster up a vague interest. He idly wonders if he’s somehow teleported himself into a Sears or a JC Penney or an ‘80s music video, but there’s another blink in the scene and then he finds himself standing in a field of cotton. Or clouds. Everything’s all lumpy and white, anyway, as far as he’s aware of.  
  
A disembodied voice says, “Oh, what the  _hell_. Who is this?”  
  
“Bryar, Bob. Age 26,” another one answers.   
  
Bob looks around, but he can’t match a source to either of the voices. A small part of him wants to yell as many variations of ‘holy fucking shit!’ that he can come up with, but he doesn’t, firstly because it’s a numb, detached sort of compulsion, and secondly because he doesn’t seem to have a mouth. Or a body. Or even a head for that matter. He’s just –  _there_.   
  
“And his watcher?”  
  
There are sounds of several pages of paper being flipped. “Iero.”  
  
“Doesn’t he have mostly Midlevels? What the hell’s this guy doing here?”  
  
More turning pages, and then: “Huh. Huuuuh.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Apparently he’s a Potential.”  
  
“He’s marked?”  
  
“Yup.”  
  
“They gave Iero a  _Potential_?”  
  
“Looks like it, yup.”  
  
“Wow. Well,” the first voice sighs, “okay. In any case, he’s not due right now, so send him back. There was probably a mistake with the Landmark Injuries department. Or maybe it was Fate. I swear, that guy has it out for anyone he can get his hands on. You ask for an ice cube, he gives you the Arctic Circle.”  
  
“Right-o.”  
  
“We really need to come up with an automated system for these things, you know?”  
  
“That’s what I’m saying. I’ll bring it up during the next meeting.”  
  
“Whatever. We both know you have no power.”  
  
“I so have power. I will power you right into hell, buddy.”  
  
A sigh. “Pete, just send him back.”  
  
Before Bob can protest – or try to, anyway – there’s an alarming twist of color as all the white plunges immediately to black and he’s helplessly being shoved over a cliff again, falling and falling while becoming more re-aware of his physical body with each passing moment. His fingertips twitch, his lungs fill with air, his heartbeat thumps audibly, and he regains enough cognizance to think, “holy fucking – ” before his consciousness finally blanks out.


	2. Denial

**DENIAL**  
  
  
Bob opens his eyes.   
  
The ceiling is looking down at him impassively, with its rows and rows of white tubes buzzing from electricity. For some reason, this noise is what stands out the most, a constant annoying sound that digs deep into his brain and reassures him that his senses are indeed working. Even so, it’s a confusing sight until he realizes that he’s still in the venue. Right. And he’s sprawled on the floor, so he must have fallen and hit his head on something on the way.   
  
Thinking kind of feels like trying to shove a puzzle piece into a bunch of different slots before finally finding the right one. He coughs to get rid of the dry feeling in his mouth, but the spaces underneath his tongue stay all numb and dusty, sort of like someone was trying to solder the back of his throat together while he was unconscious. He smacks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, frowns at the sensation of static dancing under his teeth, then does it again. And again.   
  
It’s a while before the thought of sitting up occurs to him, and it takes even longer to relay this intention to the rest of his body, nerve endings stuttering steam and white noise. His hand seems supremely reluctant to let go of the cable he’s holding on to, but he manages uncurl his grip and struggles to make himself vertical. The room slowly rights itself until the ceiling is up where it belongs and the walls fall back into place.   
  
Then he blinks.   
  
If he wasn’t already feeling so shitty and out of it, he’d be really angry at the sight of some unfamiliar dude with grimy, ripped jeans, a dusty sweatshirt, and some kind of angel costume sitting on top of the bass cabinet near the door, swinging his ankles against the crosshatching of the speaker like he owns the fucking thing while munching on a box of crackers.   
  
As it is, Bob sort of just stares at him. “Uh,” Bob finally says creakily.   
  
The guy reflexively looks at Bob and keeps chewing, but each chew becomes progressively slower as they make eye contact. He looks over his own shoulder with his cheeks still bulging, then sort of laughs to himself a little and resumes chewing.   
  
Bob thinks he’s maybe going crazy. “Uh,” he says again. “How’d you get in here? All the doors are locked down.”  
  
The guy’s crumb-covered mouth drops open. He whips around to glance behind him again, as if Bob is talking to the switchboard on the wall.   
  
“I’m talking to you, man. You’re the only other person in here.” Bob is starting to get annoyed and he tries to sound menacing, but instead it comes off like he’s trying to talk with a really swollen tongue. “Also, why the fuck are you wearing wings? Is there a costume party going on? Did you get lost?”   
  
A beat of silence. “Seriously. You’re wearing,” Bob holds his hand out and points in circles at the guy, “wings. You’re wearing wings, man.”  
  
Another pause, during which the guy’s panicked expression struggles to straighten itself out. Finally, he sighs a surprisingly simple but vicious, “Aw,  _shit_.”  
  
 _Sound Technician’s Body Found in Empty Club. Gruesome Murder in Popular Music Lounge_. The headlines scroll through Bob’s mind. Who knew what dudes who wore wings were capable of? “Listen, we don’t keep any money in here. I’m pretty sure that Brian took the cashbox with him earlier on tonight and I only have a coupon for two-for-one Marlboros in my wallet and they might have expired last month, I have to check – ”  
  
“Wait wait wait,” the guy interrupts. He rubs the bridge of his nose while exhaling a few quick bursts of air. “Wait. Wait. Let me – fuck, let me think. God, they didn’t go over this. Or maybe they did and I was just too drunk, but – okay.”  
  
Bob repeats, “Okay?” He watches the guy stare up at the ceiling while mouthing words to himself.   
  
“Okay. Okay, you know you just got electrocuted, right?”  
  
“Is that what happened?” Bob frowns childishly. He’s surprisingly okay with this revelation. At least it makes sense, seeing as how sitting up had been like peeling his body away from being glued to the floor, and the burns on his arms feel fresh again, and he just feels sort of…fried, if that’s possible. Or like someone had been rubbing a balloon over his hair for about three hours before punching him in the eyes while wearing brass knuckles.   
  
“Yeah. So, technically. Technically,” the guy winces, “you, uh.” He pauses to make a face and let out an unsure hum before finishing. “Technically, you died.”  
  
Bob gapes at him. The guy is still wincing, obviously anticipating some sort of reaction.  
  
Bob continues to gape at him.   
  
Finally, after deciding that now is not the time for eloquent responses, he says, “I  _died_?” and manages to sound only slightly hysterical.  
  
“Just for a minute!” the guy continues hurriedly. “Really, really short time. I don’t even think it counts. But you’re back now, and I guess you can see me. I guess that’s what happens. Huh.” He’s kind of just talking to himself again now.   
  
Bob stares. He stares for so long that the guy apparently deems it safe to start in on the crackers again. “And  _who_  are you?” Bob eventually asks.   
  
The guy’s hand pauses midway to his mouth. “I’m Frank. I’m your guardian angel.”   
  
And he eats his cracker.   
  
His guardian fucking angel. Bob’s first thought is,  _What_. And then,  _What?_  And then,  _What the fuck?_  No fucking way. Maybe this is what a ventriloquist’s dummy feels like. Jaw moving up and down in a dumb motion, but no sound coming out.   
  
He tries to ask a pertinent question, but his brain seems to be caught in a continuous loop of short-circuiting, so what he ends up saying is, “My guardian angel wears skeleton gloves?”  
  
Frank grins. “Yeah. You got a cool guardian angel.” He wiggles his fingers, then lets his hand go limp again as he glances up thoughtfully. “You know, this is strange for me, too. I’ve heard stories of some watchers being able to talk to their charges, but this is the first time it’s happened to me. Or maybe it was in the handbook. I guess it must have been in the handbook. Makes sense.”  
  
This is fucking crazy, Bob thinks. He’s still a little hung up over that first part. This is fucking crazy and fucked up. He  _died_? This is his  _guardian angel_? It could be a scene for a hidden camera show or some shit, but he doesn’t know anyone who would be willing to set up such an elaborate joke like this. Everyone he knows is either too lazy or too poor to pull this off. Never mind the fact that they stopped pranking people in 1994.   
  
Bob tries anyway: “You’re fucking kidding me.”  
  
“Nope,” Frank says, spraying cracker crumbs all over the place. “Here, proof. You sing ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’ if you’re showering and someone else is in the apartment. However, you sing ‘You’re The Best Around’ if you’re alone.”  
  
He pauses, and apparently takes the silence as a sign to continue. “Or do you want the chronological life story? Fine. I’m going to start when you were seventeen, since that’s when I got assigned to you. Okay, so age seventeen, your parents buy you a car, you go for a joyride in the middle of the night with your girlfriend and on the way back, you total it by those old train tracks and tell your parents the car was stolen,” he recites. “Age eighteen, you shoplift a pack of gum and then bury it in the backyard. Seriously dude, what was the point in that?”   
  
Bob makes this weird kind of noise that he hasn’t heard since before he hit puberty, but Frank barrels on. “Age twenty, you sleep with your best friend’s girlfriend. Horrible decision. Age twenty-one, you kick some singer’s ass in the alleyway behind a venue for groping some underage girl and almost get arrested by security. Age twenty-four, you make out with Brian Schechter for three hours after a crazy epic bender, and then the both of you vow to never talk about it again.” He takes a breath. “Do you want me to go on?”  
  
Through this whole Cliffs Notes version of Bob’s life, Bob hasn’t been able to speak. Everything Frank had mentioned were things that Bob had never,  _ever_ told anyone about, and he’s kind of fucking stunned to hear that none of these events had been his and his alone to know or remember. True, Brian could have let something slip, but Bob highly doubted it. Maybe Bob was on a real life version of  _The Truman Show_. Maybe this was a lucid dream – or maybe it was – maybe –   
  
Bob runs out of ideas.  
  
Frank is eating his last cracker. Bob watches him as he crumbles the empty package in one hand, squishing it into his fist. When he opens his fingers up again, the package is gone. “Nice going on that last one, though,” Frank says, as if shit just disappearing like that isn’t a big deal. Meanwhile, Bob is glancing around surreptitiously, trying to pull together a rational explanation for yet another crazy thing he’s seeing tonight. Maybe it was tied to a string. Or like, made of wax paper that crumbled into miniscule pieces that Bob couldn’t see.   
  
“Brian, dude,” Frank clarifies. “I’d hit it.”  
  
For some reason, this temporarily snaps Bob out of it. “Do guardian angels spend all their time studying up on slang phrases?” he asks, now slightly annoyed but still wholly confused, suspicious, and freaked out as fuck. Contrary to what hallucinations are supposed to do, Frank isn’t showing any signs of fading or shimmering away. He’s just sitting there, solid as the amp he’s perched on.  
  
“What, did you expect us to talk in old English or something? Like, with trumpets sounding every time we speak?” Frank giggles. “Ye olde yay fore yore. Oh, and hark. There.”  
  
Instead of answering, and even though every joint pops painfully into place with movement, Bob manages to get up and hobble over to where Frank is sitting. Frank watches him and giggles again. “Man. You look like that kid in that movie  _Jurassic Park_? Right after he gets fried with like, 10,000 volts and he's all peaky and walking around with – ”  
  
Bob plucks out a feather from one of Frank’s wings and holds it up millimeters from his own face.   
  
“Uh. Ow,” Frank says pointedly.   
  
Bob blinks and lets the feather drift to the floor. He reaches out and pulls another one.   
  
Frank jerks his shoulder away. “Seriously, ow. What the hell?”  
  
As with the other feather, there’s a tiny droplet of blood blooming at the tip. Bob smears it against his finger and it comes away swiped with a deep red, caulked into the lines of his fingerprint. He catches a whiff of the copper-like smell, and this is the fact that hits him the hardest. He could actually be dead, or in a coma and hallucinating this entire thing, but he knows he isn’t. Before, he’d been trying to convince himself that this is real; now he’s trying to convince himself that it isn’t. The scale has tipped over and it’s crazy, it’s fucking the craziest thing he’s ever heard of, both in movies and in life, but it’s real: Bob has a guardian angel – has  _had_  a guardian angel – and he can see him.  
  
In sum, he died, came back to life, and now his guardian angel is smiling at him. It’s motherfucking Bob-Easter.   
  
“Christ,” Bob breathes, as if everything will blow away if he speaks too loudly. “You’re real.”  
  
“I’m a real boy,” Frank agrees cautiously, still tensed up. From this close, Bob can see his eyes are kind of bloodshot and the hair escaping from under his beanie is dirty and greasy looking. He looks hungover, pretty much. Suddenly, Bob’s life starts making much more sense.   
  
Tiny little static explosions seem to be taking place in his vision. He tries to blink them away while trying to decide whether he wants to throw up, pass out, or check himself into a hospital. He hears Frank say, “Whoa, are you – ”, hears it but doesn’t see him, and then –   
  
  
  
  
Bob opens his eyes. He’s on the floor again, but someone is slapping him this time. Relief fills his lungs with air. Thank Christ, it wasn’t real. Holy shit.   
  
“Come on, buddy. Bob. Hey.” Slap slap. Slap. Slap.  
  
He hears the noises of being hit, but only the final slap registers a spike of pain. It clears the haziness out of his head and then he realizes that it’s Frank who’s doing the slapping.  
  
Bob jerks away all at once, making Frank shrink back, too. They stare at each other, Bob sitting up a little with his weight resting on his forearms and Frank leaning back on his heels.  
  
“Oh my god, you’re still here,” Bob says faintly.   
  
“Apparently,” Frank shrugs. He rubs his reddened palm. “I guess they’re not going to fix this right away after all. I wonder if they even keep tabs on us anymore.” He shrugs again. “So. You ready to go home yet?”  
  
“Home?” Bob echoes.  
  
“Yeah. You’re not going to stay here all night, are you? You don’t need to go to the hospital, I already made sure with Fate. He’s in charge of the bigger stuff like this, you know.” Frank looks at him expectantly.  
  
There’s really no way of responding to that, so Bob does the most logical thing he can think of: he shakily pulls out his key-ring from his pocket and prepares to go home.  
  
  
*  
  
  
He goes to the hospital instead.   
  
“This is so unnecessary,” Frank groans, but he follows Bob through the two sets of sliding doors and slumps in one of the plastic chairs.   
  
Bob ends up waiting about two hours, and then he goes in for the full workup: a physical, CAT scan, EKG, and an X-ray because he insists on it. Another hour later, he’s sitting on the examining table that’s covered in that rice paper shit that crinkles every time he moves. He stares up at the X-rays hanging over the wall-lamp.   
  
“You’re fine,” Dr. Costas says patiently. “These just came back from the radiologist and you are absolutely fine.”  
  
“Would it be possible to get a psychiatric evaluation?” Bob asks.   
  
Dr. Costas just looks at him. Someone passes by the slightly open end of the curtain and calls out, “Hey Bob.”   
  
  
*  
  
  
He gets a psychiatric evaluation.  
  
“You’re fine,” Dr. Chen says. “Chemically, that is. Of course, there may be some residual shock from the accident, but that should wear off soon enough. Honestly, it is very unlikely that a mental break could happen in this short of a timespan, with no previous symptoms.” She looks closely at Bob. “But is there anything you’d like to tell me about?”  
  
Bob flicks his eyes up past her shoulder, where Frank is making faces at himself in the reflection of all the plaques that Dr. Chen has up on the walls. Thing is, he doesn’t have a fucking reflection.   
  
He looks back at her and says, “No, not really.”  
  
  
*****  
  
  
It’s almost four in the morning and Frank’s wings are painting the empty wall of Bob’s living room with inky shadows. The reality of it – of Frank – is jarring in this familiar space; Bob’s been alternately staring at the outlining curves of Frank’s wings and his preternaturally good-looking face for about three hours now. The first two hours had been spent in absolute silence as Bob slowly came to terms with the fact that he really wasn’t hallucinating. Now he’s bubbling over with questions, mostly trivial ones like: Did people get hot in the afterlife? Was that their compensation for dying? Or was there a screening process for guardian angels?   
  
Seriously, Bob has about a million fucking questions and not enough time in the world to ask them.  
  
“I don’t get it,” Bob announces once again. “Do you guys actually protect people? Are you miracle workers or what?”  
  
Frank shakes his head vehemently. “No, no. It’s the small things. A good guard doesn’t let their charges really notice the close shaves. If you know someone who walks around always talking about how fucking lucky he is, then their guard is a shitty one.”  
  
Bob mulls this over, then says, “Huh. Right. What about people who walk around getting  _injured_  and  _hurt_  all the  _time_?”   
  
Frank ignores him and continues on his own track of conversation. “Like, you trip but manage to catch your balance at the last second. You sprain your ankle instead of breaking it. You give one extra chew to a piece of beef that would have otherwise caused you to choke. Pretty much anything that makes you pat yourself on the back and commend your instincts – that’s us.” He shrugs. “So, you know. That’s about it.”  
  
“Except for the part where I’m pretty sure that people aren’t supposed to be able to see and talk to their guardian angels,” Bob points out. “I mean, I think that’s a reasonable assumption.”  
  
“God, you always were a sarcastic bastard. Anyway, yeah, well, that’s actually pretty low on the list of things to freak out about. I’m sure the higher ups will figure it out sooner or later, but for now, you’re stuck with me. They’ve got some organizational issues going on and we’re really shorthanded right now, so I don’t have time to go and find out what’s up. Unless you feel confident without my watch.” Frank punctuates this with a wide grin.   
  
“Higher ups? Like, more angels? Or…” Bob trails off, hoping he’s being passive enough for Frank to automatically fill it in, but it feels stilted and unnatural. Frank clucks his tongue instead, in any case.  
  
“Guardian angels are in a totally different class from your regular angels. And I really shouldn’t say much more, but nice try. There are just some great mysteries of the cosmos that I cannot explain to you, Bob,” he declares in a mysterious, ‘sci-fi movie narrator’ voice, then says, “Ha ha, no, seriously though, I really can’t tell you any of the deep stuff because, a) that would be sort of fucked up, and b) I don’t know a lot about it myself.”  
  
Bob rolls his eyes. “You don’t know about it? You mean you’re not in on the whole heavenly cabal?”  
  
“Guardian angels are – we’re not technically heavenly beings,” Frank explains thoughtfully, despite what he just said about classified information. “We’re fallible, just like you – ”  
  
“ – which explains a lot,” Bob mutters.  
  
“ – and I guess we’re neither here nor there, since we were humans once,” Frank goes on. “More like, we exist on Earth, same as you guys, but on a different dimension.”  
  
“A different dimension,” Bob echoes warily, after a brief pause.   
  
“Yeah. See, you, you exist in three dimensions. But there could well be four, five, eleven, or thirty dimensions. You’ve never thought about that?”  
  
“Do you really think I’ve taken time out of my day to wonder about multi-dimensional angels? Are you fucking kidding me?” The small part of Bob that isn’t goggling at this information thinks that it would make a great videogame, though. Motherfucking multi-dimensional angels.   
  
Frank giggles. “I was just asking. Anyway, the cool thing about it is that I can manipulate your dimension – ” he punctuates this by propping both feet up on the coffee table “ – or not,” he muses, and passes his hand through the couch cushion as if it was just a hologram instead of an actual solid object.   
  
“We’re really not supposed to be this obvious about it, but I figure, what’s the difference at this point, you know?” he says, rocking his feet side-to-side on his heels, swiping an invisible semicircle.  
  
“I know,” Bob mutters. He stares at Frank’s sneaker-clad feet for a while, then says, “So you haven’t, like, met God or anything? Or  _a_  god? Or any supreme being?”  
  
“If there is one,” Frank corrects. “Because that falls into the category of stuff I can’t tell you.” He shakes his head, as if brushing off the thought. “Even I’m not sure about things, I just field the fastballs as they come. Imagine a life where you were absolutely sure of everything that would ever happen, and everything beyond this world. That’d be kind of fucked up.  
  
“Well,” he concedes, mostly to himself, and Bob wonders if this whole ‘having a conversation with yourself’ thing is an ongoing occurrence. This guy talks a lot, in any case. Bob’s head kind of hurts from listening. “I guess some people  _are_  sure, because you’re definitely not the only one who’s had an accident like this, but everyone else writes them off as crazy freaks or tabloid liars. Anyway. You can’t tell me that knowing and being sure of everything beyond this life won’t have an effect on your belief system or whatever the hell people call it these days.”  
  
“And yet, I’m absolutely sure of this,” Bob says, shifting his eyes slightly and nodding in indication. Frank’s wings twitch in response, then curl away from the attention.   
  
“Yeah, well, I don’t know what to tell you. This is out my hands. Sorry,” Frank apologizes, “I know this is really fucked up and all, but it happened, and I can’t undo it. Not my jurisdiction.” He offers a slight smile.  
  
“Shit,” Bob says, just because it feels good to say it out loud. He lies down on the couch and blinks up at the ceiling, but the white speckles don’t tell him any answers – fuck, at this point, he wouldn’t be surprised if they  _did_  start talking to him, or singing Broadway numbers.   
  
His mind is a mess. “ _Shit_ ,” he says again.  
  
“Bob. You okay?” Frank pokes his thigh with an index finger.   
  
“I’m awesome. Just had my entire worldview turned upside down and I’m seeing things on another plane, but you know. Growing pains, right?”   
  
“I’m sure the shock will wear off soon. From what I’ve seen, you adapt really well to new situations,” Frank says, like he’s conducting an employee evaluation or something. He leans back and supports himself with outstretched arms, shaking his wings out of the way while making a face. “Christ, these things are way archaic. There are talks about changing it up, because what’s the point, you know? They’re cool decoration, but they’re useless and they sure as fuck aren’t ergonomic.”   
  
Bob turns his head and stares at him for the millionth fucking time that night. Frank looks back innocently.   
  
After a pause, “Guardian fucking angels,” is all Bob says. He can’t remember the last time he was this wordless, like his vocabulary has been shaved down to about twenty words. He imagines himself spending the rest of his life walking around in a constant state of bewilderment before having some sort of breakdown and becoming one of those megaphone-wielding people who set up camp in the middle of a city intersection and yell shit about the afterlife.   
  
Might as well try to prevent that as best he can. He asks, “Is there anything else I can call you? ‘Guardian angel’ is too much like a Christmas special.”  
  
“You can just call me Frank,” Frank tells him, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.   
  
And hey, on this side of death and guardian angels, maybe it is.   
  
  
*  
  
  
Bob calls in sick the next day, seeing as how he’d spent the whole night gawking at Frank and not sleeping, and yeah, dying and coming back to life. Brian bitches him out but in a more concerned way than anything else, because he has more motherly tendencies than he’ll ever admit, and then he gruffly offers to bring over soup or something and Bob has to gruffly convince him that he’s fine, but thanks.  
  
He puts down the phone and runs his hands through his hair compulsively. Frank had been shuffling around in the kitchen, poking at various foodstuffs the last time Bob checked. After jiggling his leg for a couple minutes, he picks up the phone again and dials.   
  
Ray answers on the third ring. “Hey Bob!”  
  
“Hey, dude. Are you working today?”  
  
“Not until tonight. What’s up?”  
  
“Nothing. I – nothing.” Bob chews on his nails, a habit he seems to have acquired over the past 24 hours. “Do you want to grab some late lunch or something?”  
  
“Sure, man. I actually just got to Mel’s, do you want to meet me here?”  
  
“Yeah, sounds good. I’m leaving now, bye.” Bob hangs up before Ray can say ‘bye’ back. He spends a good ten minutes tearing through his room while trying to find his keys before he realizes that he hadn’t changed clothes from the night before. A slap of his palms against his pockets results in a muffled jingle of his key-ring. Christ, he needs to get some sleep soon.   
  
“Frank, I’m going out,” he calls as he walks through the hallway while shrugging on a jacket, because it seems weird to leave without any notice.   
  
Frank materializes at his side and Bob almost punches a hole through the seams of his jacket as he jumps in surprise. “Where are we going?”  
  
“Did you just teleport from the kitchen?” Bob asks after a pause.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“I’m going to eat lunch with Ray,” Bob says after another pause.   
  
Frank brightens up. “Oh cool, I like that guy. He’s always so fucking cheerful, it’s nice to see. Reaffirming.”  
  
“Right.” Bob realizes that his jacket is still only half on. “Right,” he repeats, sticking his arm through. He opens the front door and sunlight invades his living room immediately. Frank steps into it and smiles over his shoulder at Bob, light weaving between his eyelashes and highlighting the curve of his browbone.   
  
Bob looks away. “Let’s go.”  
  
Mel’s is a diner that’s frequented mostly because its convenient location: it’s right across the street from the club, which means that staff can park in the private lot and run to the other side of the street for a nice helping of greasy fries or fish and chips. As soon as Bob pulls into the parking lot and yanks up the handbrake, Frank rattles off, “Oops, alarm. I checked the schedule, you’ll be fine, nothing’s going to happen. I gotta go take care of some stuff.”  
  
“Wait, what?” Bob grabs Frank’s arm before he can go anywhere. “ _What_?”  
  
“You’re not my only charge, Bob,” Frank says gently. “As much as I’d like you to be, because that means less work for me, but you can’t always get what you wish for, right?”  
  
Despite the attempt at reassurance, Bob’s grip isn’t getting any more relaxed. Frank sighs and tries to pry Bob’s hand off one finger at a time. “Look, I know I said that the world is given a lot more free rein than you’d think, but a lot of shit’s still premeditated. Nothing’s going to happen,” he repeats, stressing the syllables like Bob is some kid who’s clinging to his mom at the gate of a daycare center.   
  
Frank holds Bob’s hand in one of his own and pats it with the other. “Nothing big, anyway. I’m sure you’re used to small injuries by now,” he adds quickly. He grins and then fucking teleports somewhere again before Bob can say anything, leaving the passenger seat completely empty.   
  
Bob’s hand is still hanging in midair, and he’s staring at the space where Frank used to be. It shouldn’t be this disconcerting to be left alone, but he’s now well and truly alone. But then, Frank had said things would be fine, and he had to know at least a little about what was going to happen – or not happen – to Bob.   
  
Bob makes a note to himself to ask how many of Frank’s charges have died while under his care, then looks out the windshield and at the diner, where he can spot Toro by his fucking hair. Two things people could see from space, The Great Wall and Ray Toro’s hair. After a minute or two, Bob has convinced himself that he’s going to die while crossing the street. It takes another minute or two to talk himself down before he can get out of the car and check both sides for traffic six times over, even though it’s midday and the street is practically void of people. In fact, he's so busy checking for cars that he steps right off the sidewalk and rolls his ankle. Then of course a swarm of cars turns the corner as he's hopping around on one foot in the middle of the road, hissing to himself in pain and annoyance.  
  
Frank appears on one of the newspaper vendors. “Oops, that was supposed to be me. Sorry,” he apologizes as several cars honk.   
  
“What, you were supposed to expand the sidewalk or something?” Bob grits out, finally making it back to the safe and relatively higher ground.  
  
“More like tickle my fingers under your nose to make you stop and sneeze. What, it works!” Frank insists defensively as Bob lets out a derisive snort.  
  
“Yeah, sorry, I didn't really take into account the creative genius that's required to stop me from getting run over by a fucking car.”  
  
“You're touchy today,” Frank tells him. “Okay, I really gotta go now.” And he disappears again.   
  
Bob walks off the injury and wonders who would be held responsible if someone gets an aneurysm because of their guardian angel. He finally pulls the door open and slides into the first booth. “Hey Ray,” he greets.  
  
Ray smiles and nods, a quick jerk of his chin. “What’s up, man? Brian said you were sick.”  
  
“Nothing much. Yeah, I’m feeling better, I just needed to get out of my place for a while.” There seems to be a phantom itch crawling all over his body; Bob tries to chase it with his fingers, scratching at his arm, then his neck, then his other arm. Maybe he’s been hanging around Ray too much, to pick up on his nervous habits.   
  
Ray nods as he bites into his grilled cheese. “Dude, are you working the show on the 25th? I forgot who’s playing, but I remember not liking who I saw on the schedule.”  
  
“I don’t know, I’ll have to check,” Bob says vaguely. The waitress sidles over with a menu, but Bob just asks for a black coffee. She’s back within seconds, albeit with a cup that’s slightly stained with the remnants of someone else’s lipstick, but Bob just holds the cup in his left hand and lives with it.   
  
They shoot the shit for a while, with Ray talking about 90% of the time, telling stories about things that had happened at the venue when Bob wasn’t working. Bob tries hard to pay attention but fails a lot. The problem with hanging out with coworkers outside of work is that they usually end up talking about work.  
  
As soon as Ray finishes the story about Brian literally throwing some guy out, Bob cuts in. “Fucking Brian, man.”  
  
“I know, right?”  
  
“Yeah.” Bob’s coffee has been reduced to a wormy pool at the bottom of his cup. He twirls the mug in a slow circle by tapping on the handle with his index finger. “But hey, listen, I’ve got this weird question to ask you.”  
  
“Sure,” Ray says with wide, earnest eyes. Bob feels a flare of annoyance, because Ray’s guardian angel is probably one of God’s gophers, a real straight-edge person who’s super holy or something. Meanwhile, Frank is most likely off building up for a hangover with his other delinquent angel buddies.  
  
Bob clears his throat and just comes out with it. “Do you believe in guardian angels?”  
  
“Guardian angels?” Ray automatically repeats with his mouth half-full, an instinctive echo that’s more ‘what the fuck?’ than ‘I didn’t catch that’. He grabs a napkin from the dispenser at the side of the table; a whole train of napkins follows it out like a broken accordion and he looks at the pile in dismay.   
  
Bob shoves them back in with little regard for neatness, ignoring the dirty look from the waitress. “Yes. Guardian angels.”  
  
“Sure, man.” Ray shrugs, dabbing at his chin with the napkin before taking another bite. “I believe in them. It’s good to have some hope in things, isn’t it?”  
  
“Well, yeah. But do you believe in the whole ‘they follow you around and there’s one looking out for you’ thing?”  
  
Ray looks amused. “That sounds a little children’s book-y, dude.”  
  
“I know, right? Ha ha ha,” Bob hedges awkwardly. He turns his head and watches people walk by through the window for a few seconds, wondering what he’d been thinking to even ask that question. Maybe he’d been hoping for some solidarity, banking on an impossible chance that Ray had been through the same thing; he’d grab Bob’s arm, yell, “Guardian angels, shit yeah, they’re real, they exist!” Fuck.   
  
When he faces Ray again, he realizes that Frank is sitting right next to him. He jerks away instinctively, knees snapping open as he jumps. Frank doesn’t give off body heat like a normal person, and he doesn’t have to let his weight sag down onto the seat, either – he doesn’t even have to breathe. It’s fucking unnerving, to say the least.  
  
“Dude. Are you okay?” Ray is holding his sandwich in midair as he stares at Bob.   
  
“Cold chill,” Bob manages to explain. He can feel Frank smiling at him, and can’t resist the urge to reach over and pinch the hell out of his thigh.   
  
“Ow,” Frank says in monotone. He moves out of the booth and goes to the other side, plopping down right next to Ray. Bob looks between the two of them nervously, trying to restrict his eye movements as much as possible lest Ray get even more weirded out. “You fuck with the wings, it hurts like hell. Otherwise, I don’t feel pain,” he smiles, tilting his chin up so he can look at Bob from beneath the brim of his hat.   
  
“ – some existential crisis, are you?” Ray is saying.   
  
“What?” Bob asks quickly.   
  
“Did something happen? Are you okay?” Ray frowns. “Not that I don’t enjoy the break from the usual topics of conversation, but you’re being all vague and stuff. Very un-Bob-like.”  
  
“Nah, I just. Yeah. Been reading.” Bob trails off again. Thankfully, Ray seems to buy this excuse. For some reason, everyone thinks Bob is some sort of deep guy who likes to sit back and ponder life’s philosophies or like, war strategies all the damn time. Truth is, Bob likes keeping his mouth shut because it’s easier, with less consequences. He’s just an uncomplicated guy who also hates beating around the bush, but what the fuck else is he supposed to do at a time like this?   
  
Frank is looking at him from across the table, a tiny smile tugging his mouth lopsided.   
  
“Listen, I don’t feel so great again,” Bob says abruptly. He grimaces, trying to look sick in a subtle way. “I think maybe it was something I ate last night. Coming up in waves, you know.”  
  
Ray pauses, eyes darting down to his sandwich. “I didn’t eat here,” Bob clarifies, and Ray looks relieved.   
  
“You should go home, then. We’re okay for tonight. Brian should be coming in after doors open, so yeah, definitely. Rest up, dude.” Ray nods decisively and waves goodbye when Bob beats it out of there without bothering to protest.   
  
“Man, I really wanted to see that band, too,” Frank says, keeping up with Bob’s quick strides with ease. Bob wonders if he’s gliding a little.   
  
“Shut up, like you didn’t know that was going to happen,” Bob mutters.   
  
“I didn’t,” Frank says simply. “I’m not a psychic.”  
  
Bob practically blazes a fire trail to the car. He gets in and immediately swings out into traffic. The sky is covered with clouds but they taper off in the horizon, revealing the deep oranges and reds of sunset with the city serving as its backdrop.  
  
“It looks like the fucking apocalypse,” Bob grumbles, flipping down the sun-visor with a swift yank and hunkering over the steering wheel.   
  
“Nah. Jesse says that’s not going to happen till 2092,” Frank tells him. “He’s real pumped for it.”  
  
“Jesse?” Bob asks against his better judgment.  
  
“It’s what Fate calls himself,” Frank explains.  
  
“Oh. Of course.” Bob is getting tired of being boggled all the fucking time. Now he just feels exhausted. Frank curls his knees up against his chest and Bob drives home wearily, in silence.


	3. Anger

**ANGER**  
  
  
As it turns out, having – or being aware of – a guardian angel hovering over your shoulder all the fucking time is hard to get used to.  _Who would have known?_  Bob thinks to himself about twenty times out of the day, and then he wants to laugh crazily.  
  
In the mornings, Frank hops up onto the sink and kicks his ankles against the cabinets while Bob brushes his teeth. He stays there when Bob jumps into the shower, and his silhouette through the shower curtain scares the shit out of Bob every time he turns into the water spray. The frying pan knocks against Frank’s elbow when Bob fumbles his way through making breakfast – and this is another issue, getting used to Frank’s corporeal body, since apparently he likes being that way when they’re on their own. One-sided conversations become the norm in the car as Frank yammers away about some bullshit while Bob squints through his sunglasses and tries to tune him out as he runs errands.   
  
But Bob has to admit that Frank does a pretty good job of hanging around the periphery when they’re in public or when Bob is otherwise occupied. On show nights, Bob helps bands set up before the show starts, then usually gets a sandwich at the deli down the street after soundcheck as Frank stares jealously at the way Bob bites into the sub with satisfaction. Once the show starts, the soundguys mill around the back of the venue, dealing with the ancient switchboards and occasionally manning the bar while Frank stands off to the side and jumps up and down with the music if it’s good, and sits up in the shadowy rafters while eating or smoking if it’s bad.   
  
Bob usually gets home around 1:00am; Frank perches on the sink again as Bob walks back and forth from the bedroom to the bathroom until he’s ready for bed. Then they sleep. Or, Bob sleeps and Frank does his – thing. On the first night, he had actually settled cross-legged on the floor of the bedroom when it came time for Bob to turn in. Bob had waited for him to leave, or move, or do  _something_ , but he’d just waved and said, “You’re supposed to sleep now.”  
  
“Yeah, but you’re just there looking at me,” Bob pointed out the obvious, still sitting up with the comforter over his lap.   
  
Frank rolled his eyes. “This is what I do. The only difference is that now you know how it happens.”  
  
“I thought you said you had other charges,” Bob accused.  
  
“I do, but the nightshift starts with you. There aren’t half as many potential situations for accidents at night, so I don’t really have to be popping in everywhere like I do during the day. I like it here.” Frank grinned.  
  
“So I’m supposed to have a good night’s sleep while you’re sitting on my floor, fucking watching me because you _like it here_?”  
  
“Yes. Jeez. Or you can wait until I leave and come back, if I even leave at all.” Frank shrugged in response to Bob’s silence. “I only go where I’m needed, man.”  
  
So Bob had survived on barely a couple hours of sleep a night for about two weeks, and then the caveman part of his brain must have flipped a switch or something because one night he decided to just say, “Fuck it,” move around until he got comfortable – with the comforter tangled up between his legs, ass hanging out in the open – and pass the hell out. It hasn’t been a problem since. Sometimes he turns on the TV and plugs in headphones for Frank, because Bob would be bored out of his fucking skull if he was supposed to just sit around and watch someone sleep, but surprisingly Frank refuses a lot of the time, citing it as a dangerous distraction. It’s confusing, since this is a guy who gets wasted on heavenly nectar and seems like the type to wish death on his enemies and actually mean it, but Bob appreciates the sentiment in any case.  
  
It’s basically like settling into a new life, or getting used to having a new limb, and every fucking thing Bob does seems awkward now that he has an audience. Eating has become a challenge, what with Frank watching him for at least one meal a day; laughing at TV shows feels like an invitation for Frank to judge him on his taste in humor. He can’t even walk around naked anymore, so naturally, anything even remotely sexual is out of the picture. What’s amazing is that since he’s too busy feeling scrutinized all the damn time, almost a month passes by before Bob finally realizes that he hasn’t jerked off since being electrocuted.   
  
In retrospect, it’s a fucking miracle that he’s lasted this long because it used to be a vital part of his day, a base part of who he is, as tool-ish and meatheaded as that sounds. He’s almost proud of himself for making it this far, but once the fact makes itself known, he can’t stop thinking about it. Then he gets surlier and snappish since he can’t  _do_  anything to fix it. Timing it so that he can start and finish when Frank flickers out of sight is nearly impossible, since he’s gone anywhere from two seconds to five hours (sometimes longer at night, but Bob usually falls asleep before he can even try properly). Getting comfortable with sleeping while Frank is in the room is one thing; getting comfortable with touching himself while Frank is two feet away is something else entirely.   
  
Still, a man can only last so long. After being pushed way far past the breaking point – Brian touches him on the back once as he’s squeezing by and Bob immediately feels like he’s in high school again, except this time he doesn’t have a binder or an American History textbook to casually hold over his crotch – he tries one desperate night when Frank is engrossed in an episode of  _Three’s Company_ , sitting in front of the TV with his nose almost touching the screen and staring up reverently as the colors play across his face.   
  
Even commercials seem to hold his attention, so Bob eases his hand down into his boxers during an advertisement for Orville Redenbacher Popcorn while staring at the back of Frank’s head the entire time. It’s like a fucking ninja mission, the way Bob is going for it so slowly, but when he rubs his palm over his dick, his eyes practically roll back into his head so maybe it’s kind of fucking worth it.   
  
A tinny dialogue and laughtrack leak out from the headphones, all treble and squawking vowels. Occasionally it’s followed by the fuller surround-sound of Frank’s laughter. Bob is now convinced that it’s safe; he’s also hard as hell. He jerks himself once, twice, and has to close his eyes and flare his nostrils and pull his mouth in all kinds of weird ways so as not to make any noise as he keeps going. After only a few minutes, he’s close to coming all over the sheets. He tries to hatch out a plan to make that part as unobvious as possible, but it’s a very peripheral worry at the moment.   
  
Frank says, “Man, it’s been a long time for you, huh?”  
  
Bob’s eyes fly open as his legs kick out involuntarily in a move reminiscent of male gymnasts on a pommel-horse. He pulls his hand out so fast that he almost smacks himself in the face, but Frank bats it away at the last second, which, yeah, good save, but  _fuck_. “Fucking shit, Frank! What the fuck!”  
  
The headphones are sprawled limply over the carpet, still letting out pitchy noises from the television but now they’re feeding into the air instead of Frank’s ears. Meanwhile, Frank is hovering by the bed, standing with his arms hanging loose by his sides, shoulders hunched up a little. The position makes him look strangely childlike. It makes Bob feel even dirtier.  
  
Frank shrugs. “I was wondering when you’d get tired of not beating it. I kind of wanted to bring it up, but I figured that would piss you off.”  
  
“I – you –  _what_?” Bob splutters. “You’ve seen – that?”  
  
“Seriously? What part of ‘around all the time’ don’t you get?” Frank is looking at him, dark hair and inkpot eyes and pale skin in the darkness, and he must have just licked his lips because the light from the TV is reflecting off them very faintly.   
  
Bob forces himself to stop staring. He kicks off the covers and hobbles toward the bathroom as fast as he can while another burst from the laughtrack follows him out. He’s already got his hand back on his dick almost before he slams the door shut with his ankle and he comes within seconds, eyes squeezed shut, his other hand braced against the counter, but there’s almost no satisfaction in it.   
  
When he squints his eyes open and turns on the faucet, he sighs wearily and looks into the mirror. “Okay, you can’t just run off like that,” Frank says from behind him. “Or, well, you can, but it makes it harder for me. Or, well, not harder, but still – ”  
  
“You’re driving me crazy. Seriously, I kind of want to kill myself,” Bob complains as he washes his hands.   
  
Frank crosses his arms. “I know you don’t actually mean that, which is why I’m not punching you in the chest right now. Here’s a piece of advice.” He leans forward until the shadow of his chin hooks over Bob’s shoulder, and loudly announces, “Get used to it. And shit, dude, squeeze one out whenever you want, you’re the boss around here. That was a freakishly long dry period. Sometimes I wonder which one of us is the human.”  
  
He raises his eyebrows at Bob’s reflection, then opens the door and wanders out. Bob stares at the mirror as the tips of Frank’s wings disappear into the hallway. He wonders vaguely if it’s possible to strangle an angel to death, and then if it’s a mortal sin to strangle an angel to death. Frank’s more of a pseudo-angel anyway, according to him, and If it’s possible to physically reach out and touch him, then Bob can probably do it, but –   
  
“Dude, go to bed or you’re going to be all cranky,” Frank calls from the bedroom.   
  
Bob dries his hands on his towel and wonders what his life has become. He feels like he’s been transplanted into a fucking sitcom, or maybe an hour-long drama. Storylines say that if it’s the former, then Frank will hang around for the rest of Bob’s natural life, being contrary and pissing him off. If it’s the latter, then Bob will eventually get used to Frank’s presence and just when they’re starting to get along, Bob will die in a freak accident.   
  
One day at a time, he thinks, trying to bring himself back into reality. The sheets are still warm when he slinks back into the room and slides into bed. He’s suddenly exhausted, lacking the energy to even feel embarrassed anymore. Frank resumes watching TV as Bob kicks around before drifting off to the sound of Frank’s breathy giggles.  
  
  
*****  
  
  
And it goes on the same way for a while. As much as Bob doesn’t want to admit it, he’s cranky pretty much all the time now, just as Frank had predicted. It’s a Tuesday morning – or Wednesday, whatever – and it takes all his energy just to wash up and get dressed and drive over to work. He trudges into the relative dark of the club, since they only keep about half the ceiling lights on during the day, and is greeted by Brian saying, “You look like death. Why do you always look like death these days?”  
  
“I’m tired,” Bob retorts.   
  
Brian rolls his eyes. “Aren’t you supposed to stop using that excuse sometime in your early twenties?” Just because Brian lives off of Red Bull and weird herbal shit from the Himalayas that supposedly boosts your natural energy or what-the-fuck-ever.   
  
“Shut up,” is all Bob can come up with, and then he shuffles off to the back where Ray is supposed to be stocking up whiskey bottles on the shelves but is instead lounging on a stool, twanging an acoustic guitar.  
  
“Hey Bob,” Ray calls over some weird twist on the pentatonic scale.   
  
“Hey,” Bob grunts. He sees Frank out of the corner of his eye, stopping in front of a full bottle of Jim Beam to eye it jealously before withdrawing his own flask from his hoodie pocket.   
  
“How’s it going?” Ray asks amicably, also looking concerned. In turn, it makes Bob even surlier. To counterbalance the cosmos and all.   
  
Bob hops onto the stool next to Ray and drums his hands on the table. “Question. If you had someone following you around all the time, how would you get rid of them?” he asks recklessly.  
  
Ray slaps his palm onto the strings to mute the ringing notes. He frowns. “Is someone like, stalking you?”  
  
“You might say that. It’s happening to this guy I know. My upstairs neighbor.” Frank goes around to the other side of the bar and props his elbows up on the counter, chin resting on his knuckles in the picture of sarcastic interest.   
  
The frown-lines cut deeper into Ray’s forehead. “Really? He might want to call the police if just regular ‘quit stalking me’ warnings aren’t working out.”  
  
“Nah, he doesn’t want to get the cops involved,” Bob adlibs. He’s quickly finding out that this kind of conversation falls really flat and doesn’t work if only one person knows that it’s actually supposed to be a cover for a passive-aggressive attack.  
  
“You know he thinks you’re crazy right now,” Frank states. He blinks out and back in on the stool on the other side of Ray.   
  
Ray, oblivious and rational as ever, muses, “I don’t know then. Is it serious?”   
  
Bob decides to give it up. He sighs, “I guess not. He’s mostly just getting annoyed about it.”  
  
“That’s tough, man,” Ray says carefully. “People can be weird sometimes.”  
  
“Tell me about it.”  
  
At that point, Brian passes by with an armful of boxes. “Come on, you guys. Don’t make me threaten to fire you again, I’ve already done it twice this month and it sort of loses its effect if I do it more than that.”  
  
“Already lost, my friend,” Ray says, but he leans his guitar against the bar and hops off to follow Brian. Bob does too, but more slowly, and he has time to see Frank reach out and rest his hand over the first fret with a cautious touch.   
  
“Bob!” Brian yells from backstage.  
  
“Yeah,” Bob calls back without taking his eyes off Frank’s hand. They look up at the same time, meeting each other’s eyes, and then Frank moves so quickly that Bob wonders if it was all in his over-exhausted imagination.  
  
He shuffles backstage, where Brian is ripping open the boxes full of napkins and paper coasters. “Here,” Brian says, and tosses him an orange box-cutter.   
  
Almost at the same time, Frank mutters, “Don’t catch it,” from behind Bob. As soon as Bob hears him, something strange happens – his body had been poised for the catch, but suddenly his arms lock up and he sidesteps out of the way instead, letting the box-cutter clatter to the floor in a slow arc. It’s a reaction that seems like it came of his own volition, but he knows that’s not true.  
  
“Uh. Nice catch? What the hell was that?” Brian asks, having also watched its journey toward the floor.   
  
Bob kneels down to pick it up gingerly, showing Brian how the blade-locking mechanism has been wiggled loose, letting the sharp end slip out during flight. It probably would have lodged itself into Bob’s palm, had he not moved.  
  
“Oh,  _shit_ ,” Brian curses after a pause. “Shit! I’m so sorry dude. Jesus, how the hell did that happen?”  
  
“Probably just old age and too much use,” Bob says, mostly to himself. He clicks the blade back down into the plastic housing and stares at it.   
  
Brian comes to stand over him, blocking out some of the light. “Christ, Bob. I’m really sorry. That was really fucking stupid of me.”  
  
“No worries.” Bob looks up over his shoulder and makes a slight face. Behind Brian, sitting up on top of the same amp as the first time, Frank shrugs. “Calm down, dude. We threw this thing around all the time, you know that. I’m pretty sure we even played darts with it at one point. It wasn’t your fault.” Honestly, he’s more freaked out about the part where Frank had told him not to catch it and he actually hadn’t.  
  
“Those are some good reflexes you got, man,” Brian exhales. He briefly squeezes Bob’s arm when he stands back up to grab a roll of electrical tape off a shelf and wrap the whole box-cutter before throwing it into the trash.   
  
“Whoa, what’s with the vibe?” Ray asks, emerging from the hallway leading to the bathroom.   
  
“I almost just killed Bob,” answers Brian. “Or his hand, anyway.”  
  
“Brian is being a motherfucking mother hen again,” Bob corrects. He surreptitiously wipes his clammy palms on his pants.  
  
Ray grins. “Motherfucking mother hen, huh?”  
  
“Ha,” Brian grumbles. “That bumper sticker was real funny, by the way.”  
  
“Good thing I ordered 200 of them, then,” Bob says, trying to get back into the swing of things. Trying to get used to the fact that, hey, turns out sometimes he isn’t the only one dictating his own actions.   
  
Ray adds, “Just so you won’t ever forget your basest instincts, Brian,” before sitting down and continuing to unpack the boxes. Brian kneels down to help him, and then seems to notice that Bob hasn’t moved.   
  
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asks in a worried voice.  
  
“Yeah,” Bob says quickly. “Yeah, it’s cool. There are more boxes up front, right?” When Brian nods, Bob offers, “I’ll go get them. But I’m too traumatized to unpack everything, so you’ll have to do it yourself.”  
  
This half-hearted joke seems to let Brian relax. “Fuck you. Fine.”  
  
Bob grins before ducking out through the side and opening the stage door. Frank is sitting at the bar again, twirling from side to side with slow pushes of his feet.   
  
“Um,” Bob says quietly. “Is that – is that how it works?”  
  
“You saw it in action, man,” Frank tells him. “Actually, that was a screw up on my part. You weren’t ever supposed to notice things like that. You haven’t so far, anyway, until now, but it happened too quick to figure out another way.”  
  
“I just thought you were slacking,” Bob says slowly, flipping through recent frames of memories to see if he can pinpoint any specific time where it was obvious that Frank was, you know, his guardian angel. He can’t come up with anything, though, and there’s also the fact that he actually hasn’t had a major scrape or bruise for a while. Maybe he’s underestimated Frank.  
  
He shakes his head, trying to recreate the feeling of that moment. The closest comparison he can think of is drumming; when he’s just zones back in without ever remembering exactly when he zoned out in the first place. “That was so weird.  _God_ , that was weird.”   
  
“Was it really?” Frank makes an interested noise. “I’ve never gotten a firsthand reaction before.”  
  
“Yeah. Uh. Thanks, I guess,” Bob says, even though it sounds fucking awkward as hell. He has no idea what to say to someone who regularly watches out for him like that.  
  
Frank gives him a funny look. “Don’t ever say that,” he says eventually, in a slightly uncomfortable tone.  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“Just. Don’t. It’s fucking weird.”  
  
For the first time, it seems like Bob has touched a nerve. He scratches his jaw and says, “Okay. I’ll save the thanks for when they really matter, then.”  
  
“Do that,” Frank replies, all smiles once again.   
  
  
*  
  
  
Despite things looking up, the show that night kind of goes haywire. A monitor blows out, people rush the stage, and Bob has to break up three separate barfights. Couple that with the fact that the whole ‘pent up energy and physical frustration’ thing had come rushing back full force after the box-cutter episode, and Bob is right back to being the hot-tempered asshole he’d been that morning.   
  
Constantly checking the clock is doing nothing to relieve traffic, but Bob keeps glancing at it anyway. He drums his fingers on the wheel, pinky to pinky, then raps it with his fists in a paradiddle, right-left-right-right left-right-left-left. The car jerks forward a little each time he taps the brake with his foot. About a mile from the exit, he silently says fuck it and pulls into the shoulder to gun it off the freeway.   
  
“I don’t ever remember being this wound up when I hadn’t touched myself in a while,” Frank muses, hitting on the right issue once again. It’s really annoying, how he knows Bob this well. “Maybe it’s different for people nowadays.”  
  
Bob clenches his jaw.  
  
Frank tries again: “Seriously, you need to get over it.”  
  
“Shut up. It’s not just that,” Bob growls, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. He almost rear-ends the car in front of him, then honks just for the hell of it. The road seems full of SUVs tonight, and invasive beams of headlights are blasting into his face no matter which way he hunches over or angles the sun-visors. He turns on his blinker and swings into the parking lot of his apartment complex.  
  
Frank taps his knuckles against the window. Then he abruptly sits up and shifts in his seat, tucking one knee up so that he can face Bob. “Okay, really. Sure, the show tonight was crap, but that’s a weak-ass excuse.”  
  
“You’re a weak-ass excuse,” Bob mutters pathetically.   
  
“Seriously, Bob. In general, it’s bumming me out that you’re not  _you_  anymore. You’re all watchful and on edge and it kind of kills me that it’s still like that,” Frank says in such a calm, earnest voice that it unnerves Bob a little. “I thought you’d get used to it. You seemed okay this afternoon, but I guess that was temporary.”  
  
Bob glances at Frank, then returns his gaze forward, then glances at him again quickly, just to make sure he isn’t joking. With his chin slightly tucked toward his chest and a drawn expression, Frank looks strangely pensive. Bob rubs his chin, frowns at the stubble, and says, “Uh, yeah, as much as I’d like for things to go back to normal, I really don’t think it’s going to happen, considering.” He gesticulates with a wild swipe of his hand and sarcastically says, “And right, I’m sure that my not jacking off is real heart-breaking for you. Sorry.”  
  
“It’s not just that – and yeah, it is heartbreaking, actually,” Frank says stubbornly, turning to face Bob. “It’s not like I’m going to laugh at you or anything.”  
  
“I don’t care if you – what?” Bob gets distracted for a minute as he scoots into a parking spot and gets out of the car. He doesn’t start talking again until he’s turning the deadbolt on his door, lest his neighbors think he’s crazy. They’re already scared of him as it is. They’re also scared of that Gerard guy who lives upstairs. This corner of the complex is getting a reputation, apparently. “Anyway. I don’t care if you laugh, that’s not even the problem,” he says as he shuts the door and throws his keys onto the coffee table.   
  
Frank settles onto the floor – strangely enough, he loves sitting on the floor, Bob doesn’t know what the fuck that’s about – and watches Bob take off his jacket and throw it onto the couch arm before sitting down. “Then why?”   
  
“Jesus, because it’s voyeuristic and skeezy and exhibitionistic and all that other junk.” Bob stumbles over his words. “Basically it’s fucking creepy, okay? For both of us. Basically it’s a live porn show.”  
  
Frank is silent for a while. He lies down on the carpet and blinks up at the ceiling, apparently contemplating how it would be creepy. He says offhandedly, “You know, part of our training is to watch porn for months.”  
  
“What?” Bob stares at him. He’s supremely glad for the change in subject, but they hadn’t really jumped topics as far as Bob would have hoped. Still, at least they’re not talking about his inability to jerk off in front of an audience. “Porn? Months?”  
  
“Yeah. Desensitization and all that, just so we don’t spend the rest of the afterlife giggling and getting distracted every time our charge gets laid. Guy on girl, guy on guy, girl on girl, guy on inanimate object, girl with fruit, you get the point.” Frank stretches out, crooks one arm under his head and lays the other over his stomach. His fingers tap over his belly. “And the Discovery Channel was mandatory viewing for forty hours a month.”  
  
“I’m having a hard time believing that that actually works,” Bob says skeptically.  
  
“Trust me. It does. I could have a bed made of boobs – like, I could have an entire house just filled with boobs and dicks and I would be fine with it. Save for it being creepy as hell, but you know what I mean.”  
  
Bob almost laughs, getting into the swing of the conversation. “What about like,” and he can’t really think of anything dirtier than what Frank just rattled off. “Four girls at once?” he asks lamely.   
  
“Nope.”  
  
“Five.”  
  
“Nothing.”  
  
“Nine girls and a horse.”  
  
“Oh stop it Bob, I’m popping a boner,” Frank says in a bored voice. “Seriously, no dice.”  
  
“But you do have,” and Bob clamps his mouth shut.   
  
Frank raises his eyebrows. “The means? Man,  _Dogma_  threw out so many misperceptions about us. Not specifically us, but you know what I’m saying.”  
  
“That’s a yes,” he says pointedly, when Bob can’t quite cover up the confusion on his face. “Next you’re going to ask me if guardian angels have sex, aren’t you?”  
  
“No,” Bob snaps, even though he was totally going to. “Look, you don’t get to be all indignant when I’m probably the only person on the planet who can hold conversations with their guardian fucking angel, okay. I need some room to ask stupid questions.”  
  
After a beat, Frank thoughtfully asks, “Indignant, huh? I didn’t know people actually used that word outside of books.” He sighs, “Anyway. Unfortunately, sex is a human urge. You pretty much get stripped of the motivation once you cross over.”  
  
“No pain,” Bob reiterates slowly, “but no sex.”  
  
“Yeah. Totally not worth it.” Frank turns his head so that his cheek is pressing into the carpet, and says, “By the way, there are only so many times you can use the ‘I can talk to my guardian angel so you have to answer me’ card.”  
  
“Yeah, I know,” Bob admits grumpily.  
  
“And I haven’t forgotten the fact that you’re still being all weird, in case you were wondering.”  
  
Fuck. “Yeah, well, you would, wouldn’t you,” Bob accuses. Christ, he hates being reduced to petulance but he really can’t help it.  
  
“That’s right, I would,” Frank says happily. Then he sits up, as if hearing an alarm that’s inaudible to Bob’s ears. “Ah shit, I gotta go.”  
  
Bob has learned through experience that these abrupt departures usually resulted in longer disappearances on Frank’s part. As soon as he blinks out, Bob runs into the bathroom and jerks off quickly and efficiently and without second thought, and it’s just feels too fucking good to be ashamed about it. The sad truth of it is, all that talk about porn and sex had gotten him turned on. Might as well get over the shame and grab the opportunity as long as there was one.   
  
As he’s washing his hands, he realizes that in a really sketchy turn of events, he’s coming to associate these secret jerking off sessions with Frank. He stares into the mirror, just like each time, and wonders how the fuck he got here.   
  
  
*****  
  
  
“Hey.” A hand snaps its fingers about two inches away from Bob’s face and he instinctively leans away from it. “Are you okay?”  
  
Bob zooms his vision out and sees that the hand belongs to Brian, who’s looking at him strangely. “Fine, I’m fine,” he assures while compulsively rubbing a palm over his chin. He realizes too late that these are not the words or gestures of someone who really is fine. Brian, being Brian, being an astute, observant bastard, notices these things right away.   
  
“You’ve been a zombie for the past couple months now. I didn’t want to say anything, but.” Brian grabs a hold of both of Bob’s shoulders and shakes lightly. “Bob, you’re like a shell of your former self, and I just don’t know what to do.” He shakes again.   
  
“Get off me.” Bob shrugs off Brian’s grip. Brian lets go easily enough and he’s smiling, but there’s an unblinking kind of concern on his face.   
  
“Seriously, is something up?”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Just. You look kind of off.” Brian shrugs.   
  
“Not getting enough sleep, I guess,” Bob replies. It kind of helps that he hasn’t shaved in about a week or so, the results of which add to the picture of a sleep-deprived, zombie Bob.   
  
“Huh. So hey, listen. I don’t know if this is your thing at all, but.” Brian pauses, as if to gauge Bob’s reaction to this less than auspicious start. Bob’s too tired to even care all that much, so he just nods as a go-ahead. “But yeah, do you remember Darren? He’s a drummer too, you guys met a few times, you got drunk and told me all kinds of shit about him that I didn’t want to hear, something involving a bed and a cowbell…” he trails off when Bob continues to look at him blankly.   
  
“Fine, okay, you don’t remember. Good. Anyway, he’s been unattached for a while now and I mentioned your name a few times just in casual conversation and he seemed kind of interested. So…” Brian trails off again.  
  
“So…” Bob echoes, almost involuntarily, for lack of anything better to say.   
  
Brian rolls his eyes. “Well yeah, so are you down for it or not? It’s cool either way, I just figured I’d get a direct rejection from you instead of telling him that you’re not interested without even asking.”  
  
“Does it seem like I’m the blind date type?” Bob asks, which might come off as confrontational if he had more energy, but Brian tilts his head with a strange expression, which means that he probably added even more to the zombie Bob thing. “I’m fine,” Bob adds hastily, before Brian can say anything. “Yeah, that sounds great.”  
  
“What?” Brian asks after a pause.  
  
“Sounds great,” Bob reaffirms. “The blind date thing. Let’s go for it.”  
  
“Really?” Brian sounds doubtful. Bob feels a familiar spark of annoyance.   
  
“Dude, what do you want me to say? If I said no, then you’d be all over my ass about not giving anyone a chance. Now I say yes and you don’t buy it.”  
  
“Jesus Christ, Bryar, chill the fuck out. I’ll give him your number and tell him to call you, okay?” Brian gives him a look that would be vaguely pleading, if Brian were stupid enough to do such a thing. “Don’t fuck this up, dude. Darren’s a nice guy.”  
  
“Sure,” says Bob, which is an answer that doesn’t really make sense in response to the question, but that’s what he’s going for here.   
  
Brian is still studying him suspiciously. After a silent internal struggle, he seems to let it go. Bob can see him visibly exhaling anyway, and figures it’s part of the stress management regimen that he’s trying out. “Okay,” he says carefully. “He actually might be here tonight. You’re coming, right?”  
  
Bob scrolls through his mental calendar. It’s mostly empty and has a lot of holes in it. “Eh?”  
  
“Five year anniversary for the club, man. I closed the place off for a private party tonight,” Brian reminds him, and Bob feels legitimately bad now. This club has been Brian’s baby since before it even opened. He’d put everything he had into it, but sometimes Bob forgets that.   
  
“Yeah, definitely.” Bob rubs his forehead with a wince. “Sorry, I keep losing track of the days. Congratulations though, I know how much you love this place. And I love it too,” he adds, rolling his eyes a little at Brian’s expectant expression. “You did good, man.”   
  
“Thanks, I want to go home and cry tears of joy now,” Brian says dryly. “And like, bottle up my tears and make them into a necklace.”  
  
“I’m pretty sure they ban that tone of voice in your stress management sessions.”  
  
“They don’t have any rules against sarcasm.” Brian starts walking backward, away from the conversation. “10 o’clock. Bring whoever you want,” he calls.  
  
Whoever he wants. He kind of expects Frank to show up, since the world works in weird fucking ways like that, but the place stays empty and he’s left feeling oddly disappointed.   
  
  
*  
  
  
By the time he goes home and changes and comes back, it’s almost midnight and he can hear the noise inside the club as soon as he steps out of the car. It’s like chaos contained in a little box of a building, and he prepares himself to be all social and shit before he opens the door.   
  
“I’m here, let’s party,” Frank announces as he pops out of nowhere.  
  
Bob twitches at his appearance. “Dude, how many times do I have to ask you not to do that?”  
  
“A lot,” Frank answers lightly.  
  
Bob clenches his teeth for a few seconds before opening the door and letting out a flood of sound. Lindsey’s manning the door, apparently, and she gets a pretty hilarious look on her face when she sees him.  
  
“Holy shit, he showed,” Lindsey crows, and yells, “He showed!” to no one in particular. She gives him a quick hug, a slightly damp hand pressing in between his shoulder-blades. “How’s it going, Bryar?” she asks, just as Frank says, “I’ll be around,” right into Bob’s ear and slips away as Bob gives a surreptitious glance to the side.  
  
“Do we know all these people?” is what he says out loud in response to Lindsey, because holy shit, the club is packed. Most of them have vaguely familiar faces, but Bob hasn’t been formally introduced to about 99% of them. He peels off his beanie but puts it back on after second thought, stretching it down until it almost covers his eyelids.  
  
“Doing all we can to make ourselves look unapproachable, huh?” says Alicia, coming up and slinging an arm around his shoulder.   
  
“You know we hate when we play the pronoun game,” Bob sing-songs. He snatches the beer out of her hand – almost full, awesome – and raises it slightly in cheers before he gulps from it.   
  
Alicia cuffs him on the head. “I hope I have some communicable disease that I’ve just passed on to you.”  
  
“Seriously Bryar, is that any way to treat a lady?” Lindsey chimes in with a grin. When Alicia plucks the drink out of her hand, she lets it happen, and then Bob gives her the beer, and Alicia hands off Lindsey’s drink to Bob, and they’re almost done having their little community drink-off when Brian appears.   
  
“Get away from the door, come on, come on.” He waves his arms around until they move behind the bar, where Ray is pouring out beers on tap. He waves with the hose still in his hand, getting foam everywhere, and looks so surprised and Ray-like at this development that Bob cracks up. The place is loud to the point of conversations being yelled into ears, the speakers are playing some shitty punk song from the ‘90s that Brian definitely picked out, and the drinks are settling nicely in his stomach; it feels like something in him has broken open and is filtering out of him, and it’s a relief to feel lighter and more stress-free than he has in weeks.  
  
A few more drinks go down easily enough, and then he’s talking to people whom he only sees at these types of events. They’re pretty cool and Bob’s having fun, but he knows it’s only the environment that lets their personalities mesh for the night, which is why he usually moves on before things start to get awkward.   
  
This one guy though, Kevin, busts out his phone before Bob can pull the disappearing act. “Hey, we should hang out sometime. What’s your number?”   
  
“Uhh,” Bob stalls. He feels bad blowing people off, but Kevin had talked earnestly about the greatness of Steven Segal and only seems to be here for the open bar. “Actually, I have to,” and he points vaguely in lieu of naming something he has to do.   
  
Just then, by some fucking coincidence, a dark-haired guy with glasses is in the process of squeezing past them when he leans back and squints at Bob before his expression clears. “Hey!”  
  
“Hey,” Bob repeats, torn between two people now. Kevin still has his phone in his hand while this other guy is smiling at him in an all-too-friendly way. Bob’s glad for the distraction, but he doesn’t know if he just jumped ship into a worse situation.   
  
“Bob, right? I’m Darren. We’ve met a few times.” Darren sticks out his hand and Bob takes it after only a moment’s hesitation. “How’s it going, man?”  
  
“Good, good.” His brain finally kicks into gear and he recognizes Darren as Darren, Brian’s Darren. Which could potentially be another Kevin situation, but at least he’s supposedly held conversations with Darren before.  
  
He turns to Kevin and says, “Hey, listen, it’s been interesting, but I should get going. See you around man, have fun tonight.”   
  
Kevin nods stiffly, and then Bob is turning away toward the bar. He doesn’t have to turn to check if Darren’s following, since Bob can feel him grinning at the back of his head the entire time.   
  
“Poor guy,” Darren says, plunking his elbows down on the bar and leaning on them slightly.   
  
“Better to blow him off now than later, right?” Bob points out. He goes around, pulls out two Newcastles from the fridge, and pops off the caps before handing one to Darren. “I always come off as the asshole, though.”  
  
“Better to be an asshole than to be sweet to everyone while secretly wishing they’d fuck off,” Darren says with his eyebrows raised.   
  
Bob takes in his innocent appearance, the hoodie and the glasses and the floppy hair. “Jeez, that’s pretty cutthroat. You’ve hardcore got depths I couldn’t’ve imagined.”  
  
“I’m deadly,” Darren says with a solemn face, but it breaks into a smile when Bob leans on the bar as well. Alicia and Lindsey make stupid faces at him from near the whiskey shelves; he wrinkles his nose at them but feels good about it.  
  
As they finish their drinks, the party continues in the background and Bob finds out that Darren is currently taking classes at the community college before applying to Master’s programs in musicology. He’s knowledgeable but not pretentious, and easygoing but still able to defend his shit. By the time their bottles are empty, Bob is remembering what it’s like to be attracted to someone – just this quiet pull in the midst of all the commotion and loud noises of the club.  
  
“I want some pie,” Darren announces randomly.  
  
“I – what? You want some pie?”  
  
“I do. I do indeed. And in fact, I happened to see that diner across the street on my way in, and I’m sure they sell pie. So.” Darren looks at Bob expectantly, both of them recognizing the fact that it’s Bob’s move.   
  
Bob picks up their empty bottles and drops them into the recycling bin with two loud clinks. “Mission for pie,” he declares.   
  
Darren leads the way to the exit as Bob follows behind, but not before scouring the place for any signs of Frank. It’s just the two of them by the time they get to the diner too, so Bob assumes that Frank had been called off somewhere else, and he’s thankful for that. For one, he never does well in front of an audience, and then there are a whole other slew of reasons that get way more complicated and have way more to do with Frank than Bob wants to think about.   
  
They order some pie and make small talk in the meantime. When Darren turns his head to check for the waiter, it clears a path in Bob’s vision and he can see to the window, where Frank is standing outside while smoking furiously and glaring at Bob. Bob sort of yelps a little, in a really subdued way that he manages to pass off as a throat thing when Darren gives him a concerned look.   
  
“Hey, you okay?” Darren reaches over the table and touches the crook of Bob’s elbow.   
  
“Yeah, uh.” Bob coughs again. Frank takes a gigantic drag, breathes out all the smoke in a single cloud, and flicks his cigarette away, all while glaring. Then he blinks out.  
  
Before Bob has time to be confused, their pie slices come and both of them dig in. Darren’s a nice guy, with eyes that crinkle every time he smiles – which he does a lot – and floppy hair and a good sense of humor, and Bob would actually be enjoying himself if he could just get that last image of Frank out of his mind. He nods and responds in all the right places, but he can’t concentrate on this thing and before he knows it, their plates are just smeared with sticky red filling. There’s some on Darren’s chin, too. When Bob taps his own chin, Darren widens his eyes questioningly.   
  
“Got some on your,” and Bob taps his chin again.   
  
“Oh!” Darren quickly swipes his napkin over the entire lower half of his face. “Ha. Embarrassing, but thanks.” He catches sight of his watch when he’s setting the napkin back down and says, “Jesus. It’s late, I’ve got work tomorrow.”  
  
Bob checks his phone and sees that it’s almost 3am. “Not a watch kind of guy?” Darren asks.  
  
“Nah. I used to do it on purpose, just because people always said that stupid ‘time to get a watch’ joke whenever I asked what time it was, and I got into the habit of not wearing one. It was my way of rebelling against the system,” Bob goes on like a fucking moron, still stuck on how Frank had looked with a cloud of smoke trailing from his mouth.  
  
“One man going against the grain,” Darren says amusedly. He sits like that for a moment, then starts gathering up his jacket. “This was fun, man.”  
  
“Yeah, it was,” Bob agrees, mentally slapping himself in the face until he’s focused on Darren again.   
  
This part of the night is always awkward for him – the arguing about who’s going to pay, the silence as both of them wait for the other to stand up first. Thankfully, Darren is already yawning as he starts rifling through his wallet and Bob has time to throw down a twenty and push Darren out the door before he can protest.   
  
He manages to crane his neck around and get out a, “Hey, come on,” but Bob shushes him exaggeratedly. They make it out the door and Darren grins. “Okay, fine, I’ll fold. Thanks for the pie.”  
  
Bob squints a smile as he lights up a cigarette. He stares up at the sky as he exhales, watching Darren out of the corner of his eye. It’s comfortably silent – what had been there before has all but fizzled out, and Bob can tell that Darren feels it too, if his slightly wistful smile is any indication.  
  
“You know,” Darren begins, “I’m not really good with signals or anything, but I get the feeling that you’re not really into this as a  _thing_.” He makes a face at the word, and Bob feels a renewed pull of attraction. This could work, if he wanted it to.  
  
Bob tries to buy time. “A thing,” he repeats with a slight smile.  
  
“A thing,” Darren agrees. He shrugs quickly. “I mean like, by all means, tell me if I’m wrong. But yeah. That’s just what I gather.”  
  
“It’s.” Bob takes a deep breath. “It’s weird right now,” he finally says. “I can’t even figure out how to begin.”  
  
“Nah, it’s cool,” Darren reassures. “I’ve been there before. Who hasn’t?”  
  
“Yeah,” Bob drags out, because yeah, not so much. “Timing,” he says dramatically. “Fucking timing.”  
  
Darren smiles down at his shoes, then angles it up at Bob. “I’ll see you around, Bryar.” He steps forward to give him a hug; Bob holds his cigarette down by his side but slides his free hand around the back of Darren’s neck and holds their heads close for a brief moment. Darren pulls back and says, “You know you’re not making this any easier, right?”   
  
Bob laughs. “I think you’re giving me too much credit there, kid.” He holds his palm up in goodbye when Darren steps back and waves before making his way down the sidewalk. The streetlamps highlight the way his shoulders hunch up as he shoves his hands into his hoodie pocket and takes long, slow steps.   
  
Goddammit. Bob flicks away his cigarette, sniffs loudly, and pulls his keys out of his pocket. “You riding along or what?” he asks the darkness.  
  
Frank jumps down from the roof, landing lightly on his feet and bouncing a little. “Race you there,” he says in a gravelly voice.   
  
The words are out of Bob’s mouth before he can hold himself back. “Holy shit, are you drunk?”  
  
“Shh, don’t tell.” Frank blinks out.   
  
Bob says it out loud this time: “ _Goddammit_.”   
  
  
  
  
The drive home is maybe one of the most nerve-wracking experiences ever. It takes him almost twice as long as usual, since he stops at every single yellow light and even some green ones. He’s climbing the stairs with careful, well-planted steps of his foot when Frank appears at the top of the landing and Bob almost falls backward and over the railing.   
  
“Ha ha,” says Frank.   
  
Bob presses the heels of his palms against his eye sockets and considers asking Brian for his therapist’s card or the recipe for his herbal Himalayan smoothie thing. He stomps up the rest of the stairs and unlocks the door, ignoring Frank when he asks, “Hey, so that Darren guy, huh? I remember him. Didn’t know he’d be there tonight. I’m not pissed or anything, you know,” he adds.   
  
“Even if you were, you really,  _really_  wouldn’t have the right to be. Also, what the fuck? Why would you be pissed?” Bob throws his keys onto the coffee table and walks down the hallway to the door of his bedroom before turning around and walking back, all the while rubbing his hands over his hair.   
  
Frank seems to have selective hearing, choosing only to answer the first question. “Yes! Yes, exactly. That. So it’s a good thing I’m not pissed, right?”   
  
Bob cautiously looks around his apartment. Everything looks the same – no ominously creaking light fixtures, no scent of gas leaks, no construction noises that might lead him to believe that a wrecking ball is on its way to smash through his place. Even so, he settles on the floor, taking up as little space as possible. Meanwhile, Frank is already sprawled over the couch, one leg and one arm hanging off while apparently singing the guardian angel equivalent of drinking songs.  
  
“Chop one, two, and there goes his head,” Frank warbles, conducting loosely with his free arm, “Hidy ho ho, your charge is dead!”  
  
“Oh, fuck,” Bob groans to himself. He raises his voice and says, “Hey. The floorboards aren’t rotted through or anything, right? I’m not going to fall and break my neck?”  
  
Frank kicks himself over onto his stomach – managing to pry up most of the cushions as he does so – and peers blearily at Bob. “What? No, dude. I checked with Jesse’s schedule, nothing’s on planned for you tonight. Why?”   
  
“Because,” Bob says in an annoyed voice. “I don’t really feel like dying because my guardian angel is wasted.”  
  
“Ha ha ha, Bob!” Frank points to him. “Bob, I’m not that irresponsible, okay. Chill. What, you think this is the first time I’ve been wasted on duty?”  
  
Bob rubs his forehead. “Dude, that is so not reassuring.”  
  
“All right all right, here’s a confession. Bob.” Frank seems to like saying Bob’s name – he curls his lips inward and flicks out the word with way more force than necessary. “That time you were at that bar and you tripped and sprained your wrist? That was my fault, I’ll admit it. I had this bitchin’ hangover and I was wearing sunglasses inside and I wasn’t really paying attention. I’m sorry. But!” He holds a finger up. “That was the one time I slipped up, I swear. And some other minor scrapes and bruises. And like, a burn or two. But man, I can’t expand doorways or put our fires for you, I’m sorry. You just gotta watch where you’re going sometimes, you know?”  
  
“Fine, I believe you,” Bob sighs, making it seem like a chore to claim such a thing when really, he does believe it. Being pissed off seems like so long ago already; he tries to think about Darren as a missed opportunity in an attempt to get pissed off again, but it doesn’t work.  
  
“Yeah, man. Yeah. Hey. You know I have your back, right? You know I’m always here? I’m so here that sometimes I forget to do my job, man.”  
  
Bob’s confused about that last part, but he mumbles, “Creepily enough, I actually do know that. Calm the fuck down, dude, I’m not going to freak out on you or anything.”   
  
Frank peers at him over the couch arm with dark eyes. He doesn’t respond.  
  
It’s getting even later on in the night. Bob twists around and cranes his neck to try to catch a glimpse of the microwave clock in the kitchen. When he turns back, Frank is sitting right in front of him, close enough for Bob to be able to see the tiny dip of a scar between Frank’s eyebrows, and for his legs to be covered in jagged shadows. Frank moves his wings back and the shadows disappear.   
  
“Just trust me,” Frank says, huffing into Bob’s face a little bit, maybe forgetting to turn off the multidimensional-ness or whatever, and Christ, these are the times where Bob falters with the reality of it all. He can even smell the drink on Frank’s breath; it’s the familiar gin-soaked dampness that brings to mind college parties and late nights after work, definitely not guardian angels in Bob’s living room. The whole night, Brian’s party and the diner with Darren and talking about nothing with all those people, seems far away, as if it’d happened years ago instead of hours.  
  
Bob closes his hands into fists, reminding himself not to do anything stupid. “Yeah, okay. I trust you.”


	4. Bargaining

**BARGAINING**  
  
  
Bob is sleeping, dreaming about holding someone down on a bed, but it’s not really a dirty dream. Not yet, at least. He can almost feel the body heat against his belly, the strain of thin wrist muscles in his hands –   
  
“Kill me,” Frank moans, materializing on the other side of Bob’s bed.   
  
The scene in his mind blacks out like a projector flickering dead as Bob swoops from sleep to consciousness and jerks awake, involuntarily scissoring his legs at Frank’s appearance. He stares wildly at Frank. Frank stares back.   
  
“Kill me,” he says again in a plaintive voice.   
  
Bob continues to process this whole situation. He finally rubs his hand over his jaw and flops back onto his pillow, throwing his forearm over his eyes. “Jesus fucking Christ, Frank, seriously. Can you not do that? Do you not remember what it’s like to fucking wake up like that? What if I have a heart attack and you’re responsible for my death in some weird, paradoxical twist?”  
  
“Shut up,” Frank tells him. He sounds bored, and like he’s practically eating his pillow.   
  
“Stop drooling on my sheets.”  
  
Frank sighs and rolls over onto his stomach. One of his wings brushes up against Bob’s bare arm. Bob shifts away a bit and tries to go back to sleep, except Frank sighs again, louder this time.   
  
“Oh my god, fine. What’s wrong,” Bob asks with his eyes shut tight. He can’t remember what he’d been dreaming about, but the tail ends of it curl through his consciousness and he only knows that he wants to slip back into sleep to relive it.  
  
“I just got loaded with more charges,” Frank says in a deadened voice.   
  
This wakes Bob up. “Is that even legal?”  
  
“We’re slaves to the system,” Frank grumbles. “Cogs in the great machine of life.”  
  
“And it’s not going to be – I mean, Jesus, is that really safe for people?”  
  
“I can do it.” Feathers skate over Bob’s arm again, and he takes this to mean that Frank is shrugging. “Just means that I need to be on point all the fucking time.”  
  
“Okay, so, that doesn’t sound very promising. Maybe I should go invest in some kneepads. Or like, sparring gear,” Bob muses, earning him a punch in the shoulder-blade. He smiles a little, having successfully lightened the situation a bit, and finally opens his eyes, rubbing away the gross morning film that’s hazing over his vision. The TV screen has a thick stripe of sunlight running over it, which means it’s probably still early morning.  
  
He props himself up on his elbows and finally looks at Frank, who’s still lying facedown. The apex of his wings covers up most of his head, but Bob can see that he’s wearing his beanie, hair curling out from underneath the dark knit. He thinks about all the stupid situations he’s gotten himself into, and has yet to get himself into; he wonders how many times Frank has hung around Bob’s mundane life just to prevent whatever harm he could. “Hey.”  
  
Frank turns his head to the side, away from Bob, and hums attentively, or as attentively as humming can get. “Do you ever get tired?” Bob asks. It feels like a bold question, somehow. He picks at the comforter.   
  
“Not physically.”  
  
“I didn’t mean physically.”  
  
Frank abruptly rolls onto his back and meets Bob’s gaze. “Wow, Bob. Asking the existential questions in the life of a guardian angel. Now we’re making progress.” He smiles, but it looks more like his cheeks are pulling the corners of his mouth up – just a dry movement, no emotion. “Yeah. Sure I do. But it’s not like I can up and quit.”  
  
“Dude, that sounds like anyone else with issues about job satisfaction,” Bob thinks out loud. “That’s kind of shitty, I guess. You’re not the living, you’re not the dead.”  
  
“That could be a song lyric,” Frank snorts.   
  
“It could be a song lyric.”  
  
“If we were in a band, I’d make it a song lyric.”  
  
“If we were in a band, I would kill you before you ever became the main songwriter,” Bob tells him. He slips his arms out to his sides and lies down once again. “I’m going back to sleep now. Try not to give me a fucking aneurysm in my sleep, please.”  
  
“You’re the boss.” Frank sighs, “Sweet dreams.”   
  
Abruptly, Bob recalls his earlier dream all at once, with startling clarity. He mentally balks, limbs tensing up as the scenes rehash themselves, even though he knows that Frank can’t read his fucking mind. His heartbeat speeds up a little as he remembers the determination, the feeling of holding someone down – but anyway, it wasn’t even clear in his dream if it  _was_  Frank, so.   
  
Bob tries to breathe normally. So yeah, whatever.   
  
It’s kind of obvious at this point that he’s not falling back asleep any time soon, but he lies there anyway, feeling the ghost of Frank’s feathers on his arm.  
  
  
*  
  
  
When he finally gets out of bed to kick on some torn up sweatpants, he discovers that Frank is gone, and also that it’s an inordinately sunny day. He shuffles down the stairs in his slippers and out to the breezeway to discover that his mailbox is practically throwing up bills. He flips through them with a slight frown, absently enjoying the sunlight hugging his ankles, and is thumbing past several offers for free credit consolidation when he hears someone say, “Ah, shit.”  
  
Something flutters past Bob. Instinctively, he shoots a hand out and catches it, and it turns out to be a flyer that’s now mostly crumbled in his palm. 3A comes running up awkwardly and Bob says, “Hey Gerard.” He hesitantly offers up the flyer, trying to smooth it out with his fingers. “Sorry.”  
  
“Oh, no problem. Thanks, man.” Gerard takes the flyer and folds it in half carefully, hamburger style, and then into fourths. “Those were Spiderman reflexes you got there.” He grins.  
  
“I guess I missed my true calling as a ninja,” Bob tells him. Gerard guffaws, then shoves the flyer into his pants pocket and opens up his own mailbox. “How’ve you been?” Bob asks, feeling sort of self-conscious about the homemade sweatpants-shorts-via-kitchen-scissors and the fuzzy slippers, but since Gerard is wearing this weird plaid shirt and like, acid-wash jeans, he doesn’t feel that bad.   
  
“Same old, same old. How about you? You okay, man?” Gerard inquires, twanging his words as he snaps a piece of gum around in his mouth. “I hear a lot more bangs and thumps coming from your place these days.”   
  
There’s a beat of silence as Bob tries to figure out how to answer, and then Gerard turns red. “Oh, jeez, not in that way, I didn’t mean it like that,” he adds hastily, waving with both hands and threatening to spill his mail everywhere. “I mean, like – you know.”  
  
“Yeah.” Bob nods, trying to save them both from further awkwardness. “Yeah, no, uh – ” He scrubs a palm over his mouth. “It’s been, uh,” he tries to stall. Still, no plausible excuses are coming to mind and Gerard is beginning to look a little wary and shifty-eyed of Bob and his non-answers. If Gerard, who hangs heavy sheets over his windows, dresses in clothes caked stiff with dirt and who knows what else, and presumably takes showers about once a week (Bob knows this because one time he accidentally tore open a misaddressed water bill and saw that Gerard paid about a quarter of what Bob did) is thinking that Bob is weird, then that’s kind of a problem.   
  
Bob sees no other choice. He mentally steels himself and coughs out, “Yeah, um. I guess you’re right. I’ve sort of been seeing – someone.”  
  
“Oh!” Gerard exhales in a relieved voice. “Okay, that’s cool. I don’t know, I was just worried something was going on. That you were going into like, epileptic seizures without knowing it.”  
  
Despite the urge to smash his own head through a wall, Bob feels himself smile a little. “Nah. At least I hope not. But thanks for looking out.”  
  
“No problem.” Gerard smiles through stringy hair that he tries to push back behind his ears but it flops back in front of his face anyway. He’s unkempt in an endearing sort of way, like a kid who dribbles toothpaste all over his hand or something. Obviously he’s a nice guy, but they’ve only exchanged the occasional passing smiles or waves, probably because Gerard seems sort of awkward and antisocial and Bob just can’t deal with small talk or everything else that goes into establishing connections with anyone unless someone does it for him.   
  
“I haven’t seen this guy in a while,” Frank announces from where he’s now sitting on the railing, a half-finished cigarette between his fingers. “Gerard. Nice guy.” He takes a drag. “Cute, too. Endearingly dirty.”  
  
Bob slides him a sideways glance. For the millionth time, he finds himself wondering if Frank lied and guardian angels actually  _can_  read their charges’ minds. “How’s work going?” he asks Gerard.  
  
“You know.” Gerard shrugs. He works for Cartoon Network and spends the rest of his time freelancing. Bob’s inferring that last part based on the paint spattered clothing that Gerard often sports. Cartoon Network probably isn’t developing a show based on oil paintings.  
  
“Ask him over, you need to make some new friends. Exercise those social muscles,” Frank suggests brightly.   
  
On the pretense of swatting and grabbing at the gnats lazing around in the sunlight, Bob manages to pull out a couple of Frank’s feathers without making it look too obviously weird. Frank jerks away with a, “Son of a  _bitch_ , motherfucker,” as Bob smiles blandly and says, “Hey. You like horror movies, right?”  
  
  
  
  
“And then he squirted like, an entire tube of tempera paint on me,” Gerard says enthusiastically. He’s still in the process of hovering around the edges of Bob’s apartment, staring up at framed pictures on the wall, picking up knick-knacks and setting them back down, nodding to himself at the magazines on the coffee table and the various pieces of musical equipment that are scattered around everywhere.   
  
Bob sticks his head out from behind the wall that separates the kitchen from the living room. “That’s how an artist with a vengeance acts? Death by paint?”  
  
“Hey, some of that shit can blind you. Whatever, he was a prick. Art school was cool, but then you wouldn’t believe the sense of entitlement that some of those assholes had.” Gerard puts on a pair of 3-D glasses and looks around with renewed interest. Bob doesn’t even know what the hell he’s doing with a pair of 3-D glasses in his apartment.   
  
“Oh oh, tell him about the time you were in sculpture class in college,” Frank suggests from where he’s leaning against the counter. “Show him what you made! I know you keep it in your closet.  _Reciprocate_. God, I feel like I’m teaching a class on how not to be socially retarded.”  
  
“I made this vase in sculpture class once,” Bob says loudly, kicking backward to try and get to Frank. Frank just reaches out with his own foot and bats at Bob’s. “The teacher asked if it was an abstract piece.”  
  
Gerard laughs. “Yo, fuck that. I always hated 3-D art. Clay under your fingernails, bruises on your stomach from shoving your elbow against it to try and throw a fucking bowl on the wheel – oh cool, awesome,” he breathes, cutting off in the middle of his story. Bob peeks around the wall again and sees that Gerard practically has his head stuck inside the cabinet where Bob keeps all his DVDs, CDs, and vinyl.   
  
“You’re judging me, aren’t you?” Bob makes his way into the living room, holding two wobbling cups of coffee. He sets them down on the table and goes to stand beside Gerard while wiping off the condensation on his pants. It strikes him that this sort of feels like a fucking date, save for the fact that there’s a third person in the room.   
  
“Yes, I am. Hmm.” Gerard taps his chin. “Good start with the Asian cinema I’d say, but you need to branch out a little with the classics.”  
  
“Good to know. I’m sure you’re the authority on all things B-movies and voodoo dolls,” says Bob, before he can even try to think about whether or not he knows Gerard well enough to poke fun at him without Gerard getting seriously offended or Bob coming off as a complete asshole. Sober or drunk, Bob’s kind of an asshole, it’s true, but he doesn’t want to be a  _complete_  asshole.   
  
To his surprise, Gerard laughs toothily. “Fuck yeah, dude. Don’t mess with me or I’ll steal a chunk of your hair and make a Bob-doll.”  
  
“You are so creepy. I hope that’s what you’re going for.” Bob grins back and tries to silence the voice in his head that tells him to hide his comb as soon as Gerard leaves.   
  
“Seriously though, my brother Mikey used to download all these international movies and like, sell them illegally, I guess.” Gerard furrows his eyebrows, as if pirating movies and hocking them off could be anything but illegal. “Anyway, I got my hands on so many good overseas horror movies that way.” He brightens up even more and says, “You should meet him! He comes over all the time. He has like, 80% of all the CDs that you do.”  
  
“Yeah? What does he do?”   
  
“He’s a whore in the music industry,” Gerard says offhandedly. He catches sight of the coffee and ambles over to it. “Marketing, A&R I think? Maybe?”  
  
“Working in the music industry just means throwing around a bunch of acronyms and yelling into your Bluetooth a lot,” Bob explains. “And being a whore of course.”  
  
“You work in the music industry, don’t you?”   
  
Bob raises his eyebrows. “Which would explain the increase of bangs and thumps that you’re hearing.” He rears back a little when Gerard laughs at the exact pitch that pierces Bob’s eardrums, but he feels a startled smile come over his face all the same. “Jesus, you’re so – not how I thought you’d be.”   
  
“Oh god,” Frank groans from the couch. “And it was going so well.”  
  
Actually, Bob agrees with him this time. He wants to stuff his fist into his mouth and just not talk to anyone he doesn’t know, because he figures it would be a safer plan. However, Gerard just laughs again and says, “I’m taking it you’ve heard the rumors about me? Well, whatever. I’m well adjusted, I swear. Kind of.”   
  
“I wasn’t trying to be a dick or anything,” Bob tries to explain. “That was just a really dick-ish way of saying that I think you’re pretty awesome.”  
  
“Hey man, I think you’re pretty awesome too. At least you’re not an old lady shooting me terrified glances when I’m at the mailbox. Or like, one of those fucking teenagers who keep staring at me all the time.”  
  
“Hero worship. Teens love angsty, goth figures.” Bob nods.   
  
“Bob-doll,” Gerard warns. He beams and takes a sip of his coffee, drifting his gaze over Bob’s shoulder and presumably catching sight of the clock. His eyes widen as he almost chokes. “Shit! I have a deadline tonight, man, I gotta get going,” he babbles, putting his mug down. “Thanks for the coffee.”  
  
“Yeah, dude. I’ll see you around?”  
  
“Yeah, definitely.” Gerard waits for Bob to open the door, then walks out with a quick wave but doubles back before Bob can close the door again. “Oh hey, I don’t know if you’d be down, but I think there’s supposed to be a horror movie marathon on Spike TV sometime next month?”  
  
“I’ll pencil it in,” Bob tells him. With another smile, Gerard walks to the end of the landing and up the stairs.   
  
Bob is struck with the sudden quiet when he’s locking the deadbolt, but Frank fills it right away. “Dude, that was like, a date.”  
  
“That was totally not a date,” Bob grumbles as he turns away from the door.  
  
“Sounded like a date.”  
  
“How the fuck would it sound like a date? It sounded more like a football game, you yelling shit from the sidelines.”  
  
“I’m just saying.” Frank shrugs. Bob watches him shrug again, then rolls his eyes and goes into the kitchen to rifle through the freezer on the off-chance that there’s something microwaveable for dinner in there. It  _had_  had all the makings of a date, yeah, but Bob mostly just feels a warm kind of satisfaction that comes with having clicked with someone on a purely innocent level. He doesn’t feel the need to impress Gerard or whatever, which is nice. It’s also strange, to think about how attraction is so arbitrary and makes no sense. Gerard is – okay, could be – a good looking guy, and yet –  
  
Bob involuntarily thinks of that dream again. He’s supremely glad that the freezer door provides him with the opportunity to hide behind it.  
  
“Dude, you’re so happy right now, look at you. This is the cheesiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Frank crows, having followed him.  
  
“Shut  _up_. Jesus.” Behind the box of strawberry shortcake ice cream is a bag of peas that Bob has no idea who bought – and then remembers that Brian had brought them over the day after Bob had gotten punched in the face by some drunk guy who’d been leering at Lindsey all night – and a slab of meat that’s more white with freezer burn than red and finally, an opened bag of frozen chicken nuggets.  
  
He grabs it out and dumps everything into a bowl before sticking it in the microwave. The timer is 10 seconds from finishing when Frank says, “Do you like him?”  
  
Bob has been tapping his fingers against the counter but he stops at this question, not knowing whether or not he’s imagining the forced casualness. _Beep… beep… beep… beep… beep… beep… beeeeep_ , says the microwave, and then it’s silent.   
  
“Are you serious?” Bob finally asks. Frank gets this weird look on his face, like he’s getting more embarrassed by the second but not enough to take it back. “Wow, you’re serious.”  
  
“Just curious.”   
  
“No, I don’t like him,” Bob enunciates carefully. He pauses, then squints. “Really?”  
  
“I don’t know, you don’t really have a certain taste and it’s been a while since you’ve dated anybody,” Frank defends, and neither one of them mention Darren, though Bob suspects that they’re both thinking about it. “Sometimes you get with pretty shady people. Like that one guy, whasshisface.” He snaps his fingers several times and yells, “Max! Max. And he had all that grossly sparse facial hair and – ”  
  
“We’re not talking about this anymore,” Bob cuts him off. He grabs his chicken nuggets and makes his way to the dining table before Frank can see the red coming over his cheeks because Max really had been a bad life decision on Bob’s part.   
  
“Okay,” Frank says amicably. He sits on the other chair, calves curled up underneath his thighs, elbows on the table, and reads the newspaper as Bob slowly chews through his food, thinking about Max and other sketchy relationships, Gerard, Brian (inexplicably), and that stupid fucking dream.  
  
Bob’s on his last nugget when Frank says, “Hey.” He chews on his bottom lip before he continues. “This is gonna sound weird, but I’m glad you got electrocuted. ‘Cause now you can see me,” he hurries on, scooting away so Bob can’t punch him. “It gets pretty lonely down here for us, you know? Not that our charges aren’t entertaining, but.”   
  
He shrugs. “I guess I’m glad we can just shoot the shit instead of me having a one-sided conversation with you while you pick out like, vegetables at the groceries or something. I wanted to tell you that, is all.”  
  
Every once in a while, Bob gets a fresh reminder of how fucked up this is. Not strictly in a bad way or a good way – just, fucked up. This is one of those times. “Were you giving me advice on my squash choices?” Bob finally jokes.  
  
Frank breaks into a smile. “Maybe. And you choose the worst onions, too. Seriously, Bob, you gotta get some class in your life. Eating bruised onions means you don’t respect yourself, did you know that?”  
  
“Fuck you. New house rule: if you have wings, you’re not allowed to judge anyone,” Bob says with his mouth full of food.   
  
“Cheap,” Frank complains.  
  
“Your face is cheap.” Bob scoots his chair back and begins to wash the dishes right away, a rare occurrence. He makes swirls on the plate with a soapy sponge and tries not to think of anything at all.  
  
  
*****  
  
  
The warm weather lasts through the week and continues to hold steady. In celebration, Frank finally retires the fingerless gloves for the season. Turns out he has clean, hairless knuckles, and kind of bony fingers, but they look capable. Strong, even. Currently, they’re curled around the sides of Frank’s flask, which is filled to the brim with who-the-fuck-knows-what as they watch  _Beetlejuice_  in Bob’s room, trying to kill off the rest of a Sunday evening.   
  
“How do you even drink?” Bob asks. “Or get drunk, I mean.”  
  
“Contraband,” Frank explains. “A nice mixture of who-knows-what from one celestial dimension, a dash of whatsit from a heavenly fountain...” His lips quiver, then break into a smile. “I'm kidding. I have no idea where it comes from, Gabe gives it to me. All I know is that it works.”  
  
“Angel buddy?” Bob asks. He slings one leg out and settles it over the comforter, bunching up the material between his legs as a buffer for body heat. Christ, it's getting hot.  
  
“Angel buddy,” Frank confirms. “Motherfucking psycho. He used to be a chemist, but you'd never know it. He looks like a black market operator or something.”  
  
“Did he accidentally blow himself up in a meth lab?”  
  
“Nah. Car accident,” Frank says dismissively, and Bob makes a face.  
  
On the screen, Michael Keaton pops out of the miniature whorehouse while doing jazz hands. “I swear, dude. Every single story you tell me about watchers gets more and more unbelievable. I seriously can't get over it,” Bob goes on vaguely while still trying to pay attention to the movie. “I mean, have you seen artists' renditions of you guys? There are halos.” He feels that this is an important fact. “ _Halos_ , Frank.”  
  
“Those are archangels, fuck those guys. Man, I'm telling you, that's how it really goes. Some of us are sketchy characters, but we’re good people.”  
  
They both focus on the movie for a while, until it cuts to commercials. Some department store in the area is advertising a firesale, and Bob chooses that moment to ask, “Do you ever worry that I’ll tell someone everything you’ve told me?”  
  
“You wouldn't,” Frank states, his voice falling in intonation, making him sound unwaveringly sure, “Because I've known you for how many years now? And yeah, you wouldn't. Also, who would believe you?”  
  
Sometimes it kind of sucks, knowing someone who knows you too well. “That’s a really shitty reason for thinking I won’t.”  
  
“Well, that’s a really shitty threat in the first place.” Frank puts his elbow on the mattress – he’s sitting on the floor, leaning against the bed – and shakes his flask. “Join me, man. I’m getting lonely here.”  
  
Bob crosses his arms, hugging the comforter closer to his chest. “I'm not drinking.”  
  
“Fine. Cheers.” Frank holds his flask up before downing about half of it in one swig.  
  
  
  
  
An hour later, thanks to Bob’s secret stash under the bed, they're both sloppy drunk and Bob and his comforter have ended up on the carpet during the time it took to get to the end of the movie. The spins get worse when Bob tries to sit up – the room turns to liquid, solid objects shimmering like he's looking through a fish bowl. He lies back down and it feels nice, to just go where gravity wants you to go. When he lets his head roll to the side, he catches sight of a colorful glare and grins.   
  
“Hey, check me out.” Somehow, the 3-D glasses that Gerard had found have ended up half-underneath Bob’s dresser. He coaxes them out with flicks of his finger and puts them on his face. “Check me out, I’m seeing in like, 6-D.”  
  
“6-D, huh?” Frank giggles.   
  
“Hell yeah. Dude, maybe I could even see some of your fucking angel friends with these on. Six dimensional vision.” Bob looks around with his eyes wide, as if he actually believes himself. Meanwhile, Frank is still cracking up with those breathy little giggles that Bob doesn’t think he’ll ever get tired of hearing.   
  
He eventually takes the glasses off and tosses them back where he’d found them. “I’m seriously worried that we’re tearing through some kind of space-time continuum by you revealing all your mystical secrets,” he slurs out. “And that I’m going to suddenly be sucked into a black hole one day, just, poof.” He kisses all four fingertips to his thumb in demonstration of how getting sucked into a black hole would look. To get squeezed into nothingness – fucking ow.  
  
“Please. I’ve probably told you about 0.5% of what there is to know, and that’s the unimportant part. And like. D’you ever think that this was supposed to happen? That it was written in your cards?” Frank is lying right next to Bob. He twiddles his fingers in the air, conducting an invisible, silent symphony. “Me,” he points to himself, “and you?”   
  
He points to Bob, who huffs some laughter into the carpet and says, “Ask Jesse.”  
  
“Ha! Jesse. Like I could track him down. He comes to you, not the other way around. The guy is a one man mafia.” Frank extends his arms above his head and his torso briefly curves up off the floor as he stretches out. Bob waits for the yawn to come, but of course it doesn’t – it wouldn’t. “But anyway. Me and you, man. A duo for the ages, written in your cards?”  
  
“You tell me,” Bob yawns, because watching Frank stretch has made a bone-deep tiredness suddenly manifest itself in his own limbs. “Do you think it was written into yours?”  
  
He's expecting yet another evasion in the typically smooth way that Frank pulls off, but then Frank just sighs quietly. After a pause, he says, “Yeah, maybe. I think so.”  
  
Bob blinks at him. “I’m listening.”  
  
“I don’t know.” Frank falls silent, sucking the corner of his bottom lip between his teeth. “I think some things are supposed to happen, but only because you want them to. Like, the potential is always there, it’s just a matter of actively making choices to get to it.”  
  
“Like getting your wings,” Bob supplies.  
  
“Like getting my wings,” Frank repeats. “Maybe. I – I have a purpose now, in life. 'Life',” he amends, crooking his index fingers a bit. “Mine was over so quickly, and – it just fucking sucks, to go like that. No matter how much I bitch, I like thinking that maybe I can stop that from happening to someone else.”  
  
“That sounds all noble and shit. So it's like that, huh, Iero?”  
  
Frank cracks a smile and successfully sits up, tilting his head to the side to rest it in the corner where Bob’s dresser meets the wall. “Not exactly like that. I'd hate for you to think that I'm not capable of doing some wrong.” He swigs from his flask without taking his eyes off Bob. Suddenly the temperature seems to ratchet up about ten degrees in the room. Bob keeps watching the TV, sweats silently, and blames it on the whiskey.  
  
Something touches his arm and Bob starts a little – then he realizes it's Frank, Frank touching his arm with a careful press of his fingertips, five little islands of contact.  
  
“Sorry,” Frank says quickly, lifting his hand away.  
  
“It's cool.” Bob blinks, then sits up as well. The room tips from side to side a couple more times than it should, but he thinks he’s okay. “Here,” he says, holding his right hand out, supine and fingers straight.  
  
“Oh god, is this going to be that slapping reflex game?” But Frank holds his hand out facedown and hovers it over Bob’s. The different lengths of his fingertips correspond with the curve at the base of Bob’s palm, that juncture between hand and wrist.   
  
“I feel like this is a missing scene from  _Ghost_ ,” Frank whispers. Bob has to tighten his mouth to keep from laughing.   
  
“Shut up,” he murmurs, but the impulse to laugh doesn’t go away, because this is totally a missing scene from  _Ghost_. “Let it go.”  
  
He doesn’t really know what he means by that, but Frank’s hand slowly twitches downward until it’s resting firmly on Bob’s own, solid to the touch, and he realizes that this is what he meant. It really shouldn’t be a big deal – they’ve touched plenty of times, almost as many times as they haven’t (Frank’s left wing passing right through Bob’s upper arm two days ago, their fingertips phasing over one another as Bob picked up pieces of a broken beer bottle), but not deliberately like this, and for some reason he can’t pull away.   
  
Bob has no idea how long they just sit there, staring at their hands like some kids on their first ‘shroom trip; when he glances up, Frank has that fascinated look on his face, the one that highlights everything preternatural about him and makes it easier for Bob to believe that he’s part of something more than this place.   
  
“What’s wrong?” Bob mumbles out.  
  
“You’re humming,” Frank says quietly. He presses down with an experimental push of his palm, the part where a line of calluses line Bob’s own hand. “I didn’t – I forget sometimes. You’re – ”   
  
He doesn’t finish. Instead, he reaches out with his other hand and wraps it around Bob’s wrist so that his thumb is directly over the invisible point of his heartbeat. Bob just breathes, in and out, in and out.   
  
Frank looks up abruptly. “Fuck. I gotta go.”   
  
Bob swallows. He feels sort of dizzy. “Then go.”  
  
Frank’s grip tightens for a split second, and then he’s gone. As soon as the room is empty, Bob drops onto his back with a loud groan. “Fuck!” he says to the ceiling. “Fucking  _shit_.” It occurs to him that maybe Frank had been lying about having to leave. Maybe he could tell what Bob had been thinking.   
  
A blind grope under the bed reveals that the hidden stash of alcohol is all gone, reduced to an empty handle at the foot of the mattress. “Fuck,” he groans again, and covers his eyes with his palms, determined to keep the position until everything starts making sense again.


	5. Depression

**DEPRESSION**  
  
  
“Yo.”  
  
“Morning,” Bob yawns, digging his thumb knuckle against the corner of his eye. The pancake mix is still sitting out from the day before; he grabs a steel bowl off the dish rack and dumps some into it. The box empties out almost right away and his hand jerks up awkwardly in the absence of weight. Great.  
  
“We need to go to the market,” he announces, tossing the box into the trash.   
  
“You’re out of half-and-half, too,” Frank tells him. He stuffs a piece of toast into his mouth and watches Bob turn on the stove and add water to the bowl before giving it a few haphazard mixes.   
  
“Thanks. And thanks for eating all my food too. It just gives you so much nutritional value, right?” Bob waits until the pan is warm enough, experimentally holding his palm a few inches above it, and pours in a thick glop of batter.   
  
“I’m happy to live in the illusion of being able to taste food again.” Frank moves his knee just as Bob reaches for the handle, and Bob ducks out of the way when Frank reaches above him to get a cup off the shelf. “D’you hatta goen ury?” Frank asks, between bites of toast.   
  
Bob flips the pancake, leaving a layer of it behind on the pan. “Nah, Brian called and told me that Ray is coming in.”   
  
“Cah we wah your nehlis mooees?” Frank asks, between bites of a banana.  
  
“Yeah, for sure. I gotta send them back tomorrow anyway.” Bob takes his cup in one hand, a banana in the other, and lets Frank shove a piece of toast between his teeth before moving into the living room. They’ve got  _Dark City_  sitting in a Netflix envelope that’s warped with coffee stains from when Gerard had come over and used it as a coaster, and Frank’s been bitching about not having been able to watch it for about a week now.   
  
Things are normal. Bob tells himself this every day.  _Things are normal._  
  
He pops the DVD into the player before falling onto the couch. Frank has his hat off and is examining the inside, picking out invisible pieces of lint or whatever. He looks up in surprise when Bob follows through on his instincts – totally normal instincts – and shoves a hand through Frank’s hat hair, making it stand up while still struggling to be flat, resulting in something that looks like a dolphin’s dorsal fin.  
  
“Couldn’t help it.” Bob shrugs as explanation.   
  
Frank smiles a bit. “You never could.”  
  
And yeah, that was true. Bob can remember vague scenes of shoving off Brian’s hat and mussing up his hair, or backhanding Ray’s hair when he was drunk enough not to throw a fit. “Stalker,” Bob says.   
  
Frank just puts his hat back on, adjusts it, and then points over his shoulder to the kitchen. “Pancakes.”  
  
“Shit.” Bob scrambles up. He almost hits the corner of the coffee table with his knee, but Frank reaches out and resets his balance in an almost bored push of his hand and Bob gets to the stove just as smoke is starting to curl up from the pan.  
  
 _Things are normal_ , Bob thinks again. The DVD menu plays a chunk of music on loop as he snaps the oven dial to ‘off’ and lifts up the pan.  
  
  
*****  
  
  
In the interest of keeping at least some secrets, Frank has about thirty different stories about how he died. One day he says he drowned in the ocean after being thrown overboard by pirates – “pirates, seriously, there were real pirates a long time ago, you know” – and the next day he claims to have been electrocuted while working for PG&E in the ‘70s. He spins elaborate tales of how he was burned at the stake, how he got into a horrific six-car pileup on the freeway, and how mountaineering in Yosemite went wrong.  
  
It’s a Tuesday when they’re sitting in the other bedroom, Frank on the sagging maroon couch and Bob at the huge work table, trying to mod up an old moog that Brian had dragged in from an alleyway somewhere. The lamp is blasting 75 watt light into Bob’s face and Frank comes out with, “I was a war kid.”  
  
The old TV is mumbling out some old Western movie. Bob hears the clopping of horse hooves and twangy dialogue, and it takes him a moment to place Frank’s words in the context of the real world, here and now. “You – “  
  
“I mean, I died in a war,” Frank clarifies with a shrug.  
  
Bob squints up from where he's soldering two halves of a wire back together. The molten metal gives off heat against his hands and he makes sure to hold it steady. “Which war?” he finally asks, after the window of time in which Frank's expression usually crumbles into a helpless smile comes and goes without incident and Frank still has that strange, vague look in his eyes.  
  
“The World War. The first one,” Frank adds with a wry smile. He scratches his chin, at the stubble of a guy who looks no more than 23 years old. “I was born in 1894,” he says.  
  
“Jesus,” Bob says, surprised. This small fact startles him to stillness. He knows when World War I was - sort of - but hearing the year still surprises him. The 1800s, Jesus. Bob tries to imagine Frank having lived in that time period; as a kid with cheeks dusty from summer sun, running around on the dirt roads of cities that were beginning to sprawl tentatively into the sky and oblivious to the fact that he wouldn't ever get a chance to grow old. It's a strange thing to think about, especially since Frank is sitting here in Bob's living room almost a century past his death while wearing jeans and a hoodie and fingerless gloves, generally looking like a punk kid who grew up in the 1980s on too much Bad Brains and The Germs.  
  
“Yup.”  
  
“So did you wear like, tam o'shanters and shit?”  
  
Frank bursts out laughing, loud and abrasive, but still genuine, almost relieved. “Motherfuckin' tam o'shanters, oh my god. Yeah, sure, and I did a little jig every morning when woke up, too.” He laughs again. “You're awesome, Bob.”  
  
“Shut up,” Bob mutters. “Sorry I wasn't around to take notes on fashion in the early 1900s.”  
  
“Excuses, excuses.”  
  
When Bob looks down again, he finds that his hands have drifted away from the connection point. There’s a shootout happening on the television now; Bob watches for a while without really seeing. Once the villain gets a bullet to the heart, he touches the soldering tip to the wires again just as Frank asks, “You want to know how it happened?” There's a small thread of leftover laughter, but all Bob can hear is the forced casualness of the words, the fact that Frank probably timed this question to try and make it seem offhand.  
  
Bob lays the wires together with his thumb and forefinger and presses down. “If you want to tell me, sure.”  
  
“Big Bertha.” Frank curls his fingers toward his thumbs, leaving a tunnel of open space in the middle, then holds both hands up to one eye with the other squinted shut, as if looking through a telescope. “Boom,” he says, snapping back a little to mimic the backfire of a railgun. He drops his arms to his sides. “I was in the building, top floor. Fuckin' blew me out into the sky.”  
  
 _Jesus_ , Bob wants to say again. Or,  _Holy shit, that's fucked up._  
  
Instead he says, “Did it hurt?”  
  
“Nah. They always say that, right? 'It happened quickly, and he felt no pain',” Frank swoons in a high voice. “It sounds like a complete crock, but yeah, for me, it didn't hurt. Happened too fast to even feel anything. I was a lucky bastard that way.” He blinks and stares past Bob's shoulder. “Most people – I mean, there was this one kid, Jimmy, and we got ambushed one night – ” He shakes his head again.  
  
The wires have long since melded together into a smooth mirror of silver, but Bob keeps holding it down anyway. “You remember it?”  
  
Frank makes a hesitant sound. “Soft of. I do, but I don't – it all feels detached, like it's not my life. More like I'm watching a movie. I know what happened, I can picture myself in these scenes and I have these memories, but they're not part of me, you know? I know it, but I can't feel it.” He swings his foot back and forth in lazy circles. “I guess there's a world of difference in that.”  
  
Bob studies Frank, who in turn stares at the TV. When it becomes clear that the conversation is over, that Frank has offered up all he's willing to, Bob ducks his head and concentrates on soldering the last pieces of wiring together.  
  
“Boo,” Frank says loudly from about a foot away. Bob jumps and manages to hold on to the soldering iron but drops the coil of metal on the floor. He sighs.   
  
“Let me guess: I was about to burn myself.”  
  
“A-yup.” Frank is so close that the tiny scar between his eyebrows is thrown into relief by the lamplight. Caused by chicken pox, or an overzealous sibling, or maybe flying shrapnel. He thinks about just how much he doesn’t know about Frank, but then again, it wouldn’t change anything if he knew which city Frank had grown up in, or what Frank’s favorite fucking flavor of ice cream had been.   
  
There’s a rearrangement of shadows as Frank moves away again, rolling his shoulders around a bit. Bob pictures him in an army uniform, running his fingers over the chevrons on his sleeve and pulling his helmet down to shade his eyes.   
  
He’s forced to put the soldering iron down when someone knocks on the door. “What’s up?” he asks as he opens it, feeling kind of relieved at the distraction.  
  
“Nothing. I’m bored,” Gerard complains.   
  
Bob is in the middle of rolling his eyes when his cell phone rings. “Come on,” he mutters, digging it out of his pocket and checking the display.   
  
“Someone’s Mr. Popular,” Gerard comments. He leans against the doorframe and smiles brightly when Bob pretends to backhand him before flipping him off.  
  
When he presses the phone to his ear, Brian says, “Are you on your way or do I have to hire a new soundguy slash bartender?”  
  
“Slash roadie,” Bob adds. “Slash stagehand. Slash security guy. Hi Brian.”  
  
“Yeah, all that,” Brian says dismissively. “Seriously, Lindsey’s off tonight, so I need someone to come in and make drinks.”  
  
“There’s a show tonight?”  
  
“ _Yes_. God, would it really kill you to check the schedule every now and then? I make copies and put it in your goddamn cubbies for a reason.”  
  
Bob points to the mouthpiece, making a ‘blah blah’ motion with his hand, and Gerard snorts. “Okay okay, I’m coming now,” he assures, then hangs up before Brian can respond. He shoves the phone back into his pocket. “Apparently I’m on-call tonight and I just got called. So.”  
  
“Oh, okay,” Gerard starts to say.   
  
“Wait, actually, you could come with if you’re really bored, to just watch the show and hang around,” Bob offers. “I’m sure you and Brian would get along. He sits in his office all day and makes cubbies.”  
  
“Cubbies?” Gerard asks doubtfully.   
  
“Yup.”  
  
After a pause, Gerard shrugs. “Sure. Anything would be better than inking another fucking frame.”  
  
“Cool, let me just grab my stuff.” Bob jogs back to the room to tidy up and turn everything off before sliding his jacket off its hanger. Frank slips out just as Bob is locking up, and all three of them clamber down the stairs as Frank walks beside Gerard and watches him with amusement while he compares the merits of cubbies made of cardboard and cubbies made of popsicle sticks.   
  
  
*  
  
  
“I think there’s this whole social stigma about drinking in the dark,” Bob explains to Gerard. He misses his glass and accidentally pours whiskey all over the bar. “But sometimes you need a change of scenery, you know?”  
  
“I know,” Gerard agrees, trying to talk while still keeping a cigarette pressed between his lips. He hands Bob one and if Brian finds out, he’s going to kill them for smoking inside, but whatever, Bob could just spray air freshener everywhere afterwards. The show had gone well and everyone had gone home for the night; the lights were all off, so they weren’t running up electricity bills, and Bob planned on stuffing the cashbox with some money so Brian wouldn’t flip out over inventory at the end of the month.   
  
“We’re golden,” Bob tells him without the context.  
  
“I know,” Gerard says again. His smile looks slightly garish in the low light, combined with the red pits where his eyes are. He must catch Bob staring or something, because he happily explains, “I’ve been really into the zombie look lately. Well, not so much the zombie look, I guess, because that would involve like, paper mache masks and shit, but the undead look. You know.” He gestures to his own face.   
  
“The undead look is so in right now. Totally vogue,” Bob informs him. Suddenly, Bob feels an overwhelming need to tell Gerard about what had happened to him – sitting here in the club, talking about the undead, and it’s like he’ll explode if he doesn’t. He’s been tamping down the urge to take Brian or Ray aside for a while, but Gerard, with his penchant for horror and his internet cache full of Wikipedia articles on the supernatural, is probably Bob’s best bet. And fuck it if Gerard doesn’t believe him. He’s probably the best chance that Bob has.   
  
Still, he debates with himself while Gerard kind of hums a weird tune and kicks his toes against the bar every now and then. That guy could entertain himself in an empty, door-less room for at least a week.   
  
“Hey,” Bob says, finally trying it out. So far, so good.  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“This is gonna sound so weird, but, uh. Well, maybe not, since you’re all morbid and shit.” Bob grins quickly. “It’ll sound ridiculous, anyway.” He holds on to his beer bottle with both hands and taps his fingers over the glass.   
  
“Yeah?” Gerard prompts.  
  
Bob clears his throat and rehooks his feet over the rung of the stool. “Yeah. I died once. Got electrocuted here after a show.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Gerard blinks at him. Bob kind of wrinkles his nose and glances away instead of reassuring him that it’s the truth. “Like, you’re serious? No shit?” Gerard asks curiously.   
  
“Nope. I mean, yup.” Bob never did get the hang of answering in the double negative form or whatever it was. Plus, he’s pretty hammered right now. “I mean, yeah. No shit. It really did happen. I was holding a cable without the rubber insulation and it dragged through this huge puddle.” He finishes off his beer, leaving only a sliver of liquid at the bottom of the bottle. “Stupidest thing ever.”  
  
Gerard has his mouth open and is staring at some point on the wall while absently tracing his bottom lip with his thumb and forefinger. “Fucking shit, man,” he finally says.  
  
“Yup.” Bob shifts awkwardly. Hell, it’s the first time he’s ever even said it out loud after it happened, but he kind of appreciates Gerard’s non-reaction – which is explained when Gerard scratches his head and says, “But that's cool, dude. Jesus, I don’t know what the odds of this are, but Mikey died once, too,” as easy as rattling off his fucking ABCs.  
  
“Yeah?” Bob says after a pause. He can't quite keep the skepticism out of his voice, even though Gerard is essentially telling the same story that Bob just told. He’s met Gerard’s brother a few times, and he’s just as peaky as Gerard is, albeit in a more subdued way. “How'd that happen?”  
  
“Electrocution, same as you. Crazy, right? It was in an old apartment, no heater in the bathroom.” Gerard inhales off his cigarette and his next words come out tinged with smoke, relief, and bitterness, all at once. “Anyway, the little asshole had put a space heater in there, and one night he was completely wasted and decided that taking a shower would be a  _great_  idea.”  
  
“Oh.” Bob wonders if Gerard had been the one to find him. Must have been pretty traumatic, if he had.  
  
Gerard taps off a column of ashes and glances at Bob. “Burning hair smells awful, you know.”  
  
Before Bob can rein it back, a sharp laugh spills out of his mouth. He clamps his lips shut a little too late, the noise rebounding and echoing around his head in a way that makes him cringe and think,  _Jesus, did I really make that sound? Does that happen a lot?_  
  
“Sorry,” he says, trying to compose himself, but then Gerard's face cracks into a smile and he laughs too, that stupid “huh huh  _haaah_ ” succession of giggles that gets Bob going again. “You're fucked up!” Gerard accuses, poking the lit end of his cigarette in Bob's general direction. “It does smell awful! He died! And you're laughing!”  
  
“Dude, I know, I fucking died the same way.” Bob touches his pointer finger and thumb to the corners of his eyes, wiping out the blurry vision that comes along with the kind of laughter that makes his stomach hurt. “You know what, I’m just really glad you didn’t freak out or try to exorcise me or anything.”  
  
Gerard snorts. “Are you kidding? I think it’s awesome. You guys should be the undead buddies,” he coughs out with residual laughter. “Seriously, what the fuck are the odds of that? Oh man, I should totally pitch that idea to the network.”  
  
Bob is still grinning to himself, reveling in the fact that he finally told  _someone_ , someone who kind of understands, when a thought occurs to him from nowhere, as cold and sharp as ice water over his head and so startling in its clarity that he can’t believe it wasn’t the first thing that had come to mind.   
  
He freezes, face still warm from laughing, and tries to slowly reorder his thoughts to see if they survive the leap from ‘crazy idea’ to ‘logical conclusion’.   
  
If Mikey had died – like,  _really_  died, then maybe he also – maybe –  
  
“Was he okay after that?” he ventures, trying to keep his voice even. “I mean, like. Mentally.”  
  
“Dude, what the fuck?” Gerard grimaces. “He fucking died, of course he wasn't. Were  _you_?”  
  
“Nah, I was just,” Bob shrugs, “I was just wondering,” he says, trying to ignore the feeling of having all his vital organs crowd up in his throat, jostling to get a place in line. He takes a moment to push away the sensation before speaking again, and hopes that it comes off as preoccupation more than some weird, psychotic hope. “Just wondering how it was for someone else. Comparing notes and shit. It’s not every day you meet someone else who’s gotten fried.”  
  
“Yeah, no, you guys should totally start a club. It can be super dark and horror movie-ish and stuff.”   
  
“I’m not starting a Satanic club for your sake,” Bob tells him absently.   
  
“I didn’t say it’d have to be Satanic, come on.” Gerard rolls his eyes, but looks sort of disappointed all the same. He stubs out his cigarette and hops off the stool, saying, “I gotta take a piss.”  
  
“We’re getting out of here after,” Bob calls. Gerard waves him off blindly.   
  
Once he disappears around the corner, the bathroom door squeaking open and closed in a distant noise, Frank says, “Did I miss anything?”  
  
To Bob’s credit, he’s only a little startled. “When did you get here?”   
  
“Just now,” Frank replies, fiddling with the taps and running his thumb over the handles that advertise different brands. Bob watches him – he always seems tactile and so preoccupied with touching things when people aren’t around.  
  
Frank notices him: “What?” he asks with a crooked smile.   
  
“Nothing.” And with a determination he hasn’t felt since his accident, he decides not to tell Frank about Mikey until he’s found out more of the story. The decision seems to fuel him into action, because he gets up and starts cleaning all their trash, lest Brian come in early tomorrow and have a minor breakdown.   
  
By the time Gerard emerges from the bathroom with freshly finger-combed hair, Bob already has his jacket on. “Ready to go?”  
  
“Yeah. I’ll call for a cab, we can pick your car up tomorrow,” Gerard offers.   
  
“Whatever,” Bob says inattentively. They head to the doorway, Bob looking back over his shoulder just to make sure everything’s off and in its right place.   
  
“Watch the doorframe,” Frank says from behind him just as he’s turning to face forward again. His hip jerks to the side automatically and he sees that he narrowly avoided a nest of splinters that’s usually covered up by the guestlist check-in booth.   
  
Frank blows on his nails and says, “Damn, I’m getting good at this.”  
  
  
*****  
  
  
Almost two weeks later, Bob is on the walkway, smoking a cigarette, when something dips into his vision. It turns out to be a pair of sneaker-clad feet just swinging in midair. They look familiar, though, and once Bob places them, he cranes his neck up to call out, “Hey, Mikey.”  
  
Mikey sticks his face between the bars. “Oh hey, Bob. How’s it going?”  
  
“Same old.” He hasn’t forgotten what Gerard had told him that night at the club. Even though Mikey comes over to Gerard’s almost every day, it’s the first time Bob has seen him since then and he tries to study his face, searching for any sign of – he doesn’t even know, actually. Any sign of something different, maybe, but Mikey looks the same as ever, save for the fact that his head is currently squished between two iron bars, but Bob’s used to that kind of stuff by now.  
  
He finds himself asking, “Hey, wanna come down for a sec?”  
  
“Sure. Gerard’s on some business call and I got bored. You got any cereal?”  
  
Mikey’s feet disappear before Bob can answer and the staircase resounds with footsteps. “Cereal?” Bob repeats when Mikey appears on the landing.   
  
“I don’t know,” Mikey shrugs, shoving his hands in his pockets.   
  
“Sure,” Bob snickers. He leads the way in and goes into the kitchen to pour Mikey a bowl of fucking Fruit Loops. “Cereal, seriously,” he says as he sticks a spoon in it and hands it to Mikey.   
  
“I’ve got a hankering,” Mikey explains with his mouth already full. He stands around and examines all the shit on Bob’s walls, munching away. When his phone rings, he drops the spoon into the bowl and says, “I’m at Bob’s,” into the mouthpiece before hanging up.   
  
“Gerard?” Bob asks, already moving towards the coffeemaker. The pot’s about half-full, and he pours the rest into two cups and sticks them into the microwave just as Gerard bursts in through the door. Bob really needs to start locking that thing.   
  
“Way to just disappear on me, Mikey,” snits Gerard.   
  
Mikey shrugs. That action seems to be a specialty of his. “You were on the phone for like, half an hour.”  
  
“Yeah, someone’s probably going to call me again pretty soon,” Gerard sighs. “God. Hey, Bob.”  
  
Bob emerges from the kitchen and hands a cup to Gerard. “I’m like your fucking butler, dude.”  
  
“Because you’re a kind, kind man,” Gerard says, accepting the coffee and slowly lowering himself onto the couch while taking a sip. Mikey sits down beside him and Bob follows suit. Something about three guys sitting a row, two drinking coffee and one eating cereal, is funny as hell to him, and he’s trying not to laugh to himself and wishing Frank was here so they could raise their eyebrows at each other.   
  
It’s kind of awkward and quiet, as Mikey eats his cereal and Gerard takes obnoxiously loud gulps of coffee. Of course, Gerard being Gerard, manages to break the ice in the most inappropriate way.   
  
“Hey, Mikey, so, Bob totally bit it too. Remember? I told you?” Gerard says, getting that familiar excited expression.  
  
Mikey glances at Bob, while Bob tries to sigh as quietly as possible. “Yeah, I remember.”  
  
“He got electrocuted, just like you did!” Gerard says gleefully. “He – ” He cuts off when his cell starts ringing. “Oh, that’s me,” he says, putting his cup down and flipping out his phone with a confused look as always, like it’s some kind of crazy contraption. “Hello? Hey, Dave, I just talked to Garret about it. No, I haven’t finished – yeah, but you said it wasn’t going to air until – are you serious?”   
  
He widens his eyes at Bob and Mikey, like he expects them to know what’s going on despite the fact that they’re only hearing one side of the conversation. Both of them stare back impassively. “Shit.  _Shit_. Okay, well can you go over it right now – yeah, sure, I’m not busy.” While he’s talking, he starts pointing up to Bob’s ceiling and making faces and slowly rising to his feet at the same time.  
  
“I think he’s trying to say that he’s going back upstairs,” Mikey translates. Gerard, now standing, points to Mikey’s cereal and then to his own mouth, jabbing at the air with his finger. “I – yeah, I think now he wants to eat my bowl.”  
  
Gerard rolls his eyes and walks toward the door. “Yeah, shoot. No no, that’s in the pile in the top left drawer, episode 42. Have you tracked down – no, the top left drawer – it’s not there? Well maybe Chris took them, because that’s the last place I put them…”  
  
His voice fades and cuts away completely when he shuts the door behind him. An awkward silence fills in the space of his departure, and Bob takes a deliberate sip of his coffee. He feels Mikey glance at him, and wonders what he’s going to ask about. Books? Music? Cereal brands?   
  
Bob’s not prepared at all when Mikey says, “So, Gerard told me that we should form like, a dead dudes club.”  
  
The last bit of coffee splutters down Bob’s throat when he coughs in surprise. “He – yeah,” he stumbles over his words, trying to get ready for this conversation that they’re apparently going to have. “Yeah, an undead dudes club.”  
  
“He’s actually working on some panels to pitch that idea right now,” Mikey tells him, and Bob stares.   
  
“Are you serious?”  
  
“Yeah,” Mikey giggles. “Well, that’s what it looked like. I was kind of toeing through his stuff because he leaves his shit everywhere, you know? And I saw some sketches. Really rough sketches, but you know. He’ll probably ask you about it when it’s more fully formed.”  
  
“I can’t believe he actually went through with that,” Bob says in disbelief.  
  
“Yeah, he thinks you’re awesome.” Mikey smiles down at his lap, rubs his thumb over the handle of his mug. When he looks up again, his features have straightened out into a more solemn expression. “He says you got electrocuted too.”  
  
It’s probably one of the more ridiculous statements Bob’s ever heard in his life. What’s more is that it’s the truth. “Fried and left out to dry,” Bob confirms lightly.  
  
“And you – died?”  
  
“Apparently. My manager found me. Said I wasn't breathing at first,” Bob fibs.  
  
“First thing I heard when I came back was Gerard complaining about the smell of burning hair,” says Mikey, and Bob can’t help but laugh. “But, like.” Mikey slides another sideways glance at Bob. “Like – you know what I’m going to ask, right?”  
  
“Maybe,” Bob hedges. “Did you,” he begins after a pause.  
  
Mikey's fist tightens. A cloud of condensation rises up the handle of the spoon. “With the – ”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“And you saw...”  
  
Bob waits, but Mikey's obviously not going to say it, so he finishes the sentence out loud: “...angels.”  
  
Mikey nods shortly. “Yup.”  
  
And it's such a casual affirmative that Bob exhales, “Jesus,” and kind of grins a little. Mikey grins back and something seems to filter out of him; he even slouches a bit, letting the tension out of his shoulders. “Shit. I thought you were just messing with me.” He tilts his head and asks, “ _Are_  you messing with me?”  
  
“Fuck, no,” Bob says vehemently. “I'm just glad I know I'm not crazy for sure now.”  
  
“Or both of us could be crazy,” Mikey suggests.  
  
“The odds definitely have to be smaller for that,” Bob assures him.  
  
“I guess,” Mikey snorts. He sits forward to put his cereal on the table and fiddles with his spoon for a while. It clatters onto the table as he abruptly sits up, like he’s just now realizing that he can talk about it freely. “ _Shit_. So.”  
  
“Yeah,” Bob agrees. He scratches the inside of his elbow. “So, uh. Who’s yours?”  
  
“Wait, let me get used to the fact that we’re exchanging tidbits about our respective guardian angels.” Mikey breathes out as if he’s about to run a marathon.  
  
“Okay,” Bob snorts. “Hey, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say ‘tidbit’ out loud.”  
  
“Really? It’s a good word, man. They should put it in more word-of-the-day calendars.” Mikey shakes his head with his teeth showing in a self-deprecating smile. “Anyway. Mine was this guy named Craig? He was kind of weird. Really really nice and caring, but.” He shrugs. “Too much of that can get suspicious, you know? I was used to human beings being all nice and two-faced. This guy Craig threw me off too much.”  
  
Even Mikey gets the so-nice-it’s-creepy guardian angel. But to be honest, Bob kind of wouldn’t want to trade Frank for someone like Craig. He sounds like a pain in the ass. “What’s he doing now?”  
  
“What do you mean?” Two tiny, vertical lines appear between Mikey’s eyebrows,  
  
“I mean. Like. Is he,” and Bob motions around, letting his hand flop over on all points of his wrist, indicating omnipresence or whatever. “Or is he with another charge?” He frowns as another thought occurs to him. “Wait, are the two of us even allowed to talk about it like this or is our dimension gonna explode or something?”  
  
Mikey still looks a little confused, but he says, “Uh. Craig was real chill about that stuff. I don’t know, he never really told me anything, ever. He kind of just smiled at me knowingly all the time, that’s another thing that was annoying. Did yours?”  
  
“Yeah, he spills all kinds of shit and tries to play it off as an accident. He kind of has a big mouth, I think.” Bob doesn’t think he’s doing a very good job at pretending he’s not fond of this particular characteristic.  
  
“See, I can’t imagine that. I kind of wanted to punch Craig in the face,” Mikey muses. “Fucking goody two shoes, you know? Always ragging on me for stupid shit. I mean, yeah, I guess I could have gotten hurt, but the risk was always worth it.”  
  
“Like what?”  
  
“Like I don’t know. Like, he’d get on my ass about jaywalking.  _Jaywalking_ ,” Mikey repeats with emphasis.   
  
Bob smiles. “Sounds annoying.”  
  
“It was,” Mikey agrees. “Man, it totally was.”  
  
There’s no specific trigger or anything, but it’s just then that Bob notices the past tense. He tries to backtrack through the conversation but he can’t remember if it had started out that way or what, and this simple fact knocks everything out of sorts, piece by piece. Bob’s not a big fan of intuition – usually he views it as an opportunity to make an ass out of yourself by assuming shit or going by gut instinct, but it sits heavy in the back of his mind and thinking about it is satisfying like scratching at a scab.   
  
“What’s he up to now?” Bob finds himself asking.  
  
“He’s gone,” Mikey answers simply.   
  
This is the turning point. Suddenly, without warning, everything is hinging on this moment, this random fucking moment with the brother of his upstairs neighbor, whom he hadn’t even held a lengthy conversation with until a few months ago. He can either ask or not; he can either continue the conversation or get up and put the mug and Mikey’s bowl in the sink, say thanks for coming by, and end it right now. He can leave the scab alone, or he can keep scratching it until it peels off and he’s free to see exactly what happened.  
  
He says, “What do you mean, he’s gone?”  
  
“I mean I can’t see him anymore.” When Bob stays silent, Mikey clarifies: “I was only able to see him for a few days, dude. Did something different happen to you?”  
  
Bob finally finds his voice. “Kind of.”  
  
“I think what they’re supposed to do is report it, and then switch charges with one of their buddies,” Mikey postulates thoughtfully. “Something like that. They can’t – it’s not conducive to either side to have it go on for longer than that. Too much overlap and stuff. It was weird as fuck when it was happening. I thought I was crazy for a while, just seeing things that weren’t there.”  
  
So there it is. Bob tries to pinpoint exactly what the fuck Frank had been thinking. Or maybe there was a reasonable explanation? Maybe. He bites on the inside of his cheek and asks, “How do you know you weren’t? Crazy, I mean.”  
  
“Because you just said that the odds of both of us being crazy are pretty small,” Mikey points out. “And because I know I’m not, I just needed someone to reassure me of that. But God, this is so fucking weird. It just makes you think, you know? That’s totally like, a stoner sentiment, but it’s true.”  
  
“Yeah,” Bob agrees vaguely. “It was some heavy shit.”  
  
When Mikey thanks him for the coffee and makes for his jacket, Bob gets up too, because he really needs some fresh air and a fucking cigarette or ten. “I’ll see you around?”  
  
“Probably. You work at that club, right? I go to shows there sometimes, so yeah, probably.” Mikey shrugs. Before he steps out, he wraps his fingers around the doorframe and turns slightly. “Hey, favor.”  
  
“Sure,” Bob says, slightly puzzled while trying to push down the feeling of his brain exploding any second.  
  
“Could this be the last time we talk about – it? Because it fucked me up pretty nice, and like, I’m glad to have confirmation that I didn’t lose my mind or anything, but it’s kind of something that I need to get over.”  
  
“Definitely.” Bob nods. “Yeah, no, definitely. I get it.”  
  
Mikey purses his lips into a smile. “Thanks, dude. I’ll see ya.”  
  
“Bye.” Bob waits on the landing until he sees Mikey’s feet disappear to the next floor up. Then he lights up a cigarette and doesn’t stop until there are three ashed out butts underneath his shoe.

 

*

  


With his box of cigarettes noticeably emptier, Bob starts to open the door, then pauses for no real reason. Maybe only to just delay himself. When he finally walks inside, Frank hangs his head over the arm of the couch and says, “Yo,” while looking at Bob upside down. His hair flops over powerlessly, and it seems longer than Bob remembers. Does hair keep growing in the afterlife? He has no idea.   
  
“Hey.” Bob slowly takes a seat on the adjacent couch as Frank scrambles to sit up properly. He smiles at Bob, right side up, perfectly symmetrical, and the image hits Bob unexpectedly, like he’s seeing Frank for the first time all over again.   
  
Bob flicks on the TV and immediately turns down the volume, thumb slipping a little against the rubber buttons. “Did you just get back?”  
  
“As soon as you turned the door handle, my friend,” Frank says grandly. “Don’t ever knock my sense of timing, I got that shit down to a science.” He cranes his neck and looks over his shoulder to see if anything interesting is playing on TV. Apparently not, because he turns back around in favor of staring out the window.   
  
Bob decides to fucking suck it up and gets as far as, “Hey.”  
  
“Eh?” Frank replies distractedly.  
  
After a pause, Bob shifts his attention to the TV again. “Nothing.”  
  
“Should I call you on that?” Frank lights up a cigarette and blows the smoke to the side, away from Bob even though Bob can’t even smell it anyway.   
  
“No.” Bob crosses his arms over his chest, trapping his hands under his armpits in a childish gesture.   
  
“Well, it’ll annoy you whether I do or not,” Frank muses. “So, whatever. Okay.”  
  
Whatever. Okay. Bob jiggles his knee. Now or never, he tells himself. It takes a few tries to push sound out of his throat; he dives in and says, “So I – ” at the same time Frank says, “Anyway.”  
  
They both stop. Frank waves at Bob. “Go go go.”  
  
“Nah, I just.” There’s a spot on the knee of his jeans that’s fraying white. He picks at it. Now or never, but it seems exponentially harder this time, after that stupid little stumble over each other. “I hung out with Gerard and Mikey today.”  
  
“I still can’t believe Mikey’s just as weird as Gerard,” Frank snickers.   
  
“In different ways.” Bob stares at his fingernail and keeps scratching at his jeans. “But here’s a weird thing. Turns out that he died, too. I mean, he’s alive now, obviously. But yeah – he’s another tally in the column.”  
  
A barely perceptible wrinkle forms between Frank’s eyebrows. “Oh,” he says slowly. “Cool.”  
  
Bob stares at the TV screen for a moment. It’s some talk show, people getting het up and rising from their chairs as black bars appear over their mouths. The camera cuts to the audience cheering them on. Any other time, the volume would be near maximum and he and Frank would be watching and snickering and saying mean shit about everyone.  
  
“So check this out,” Frank begins, his voice high and casual. “One of my other charges is lying under a car he has jacked up, right, and – ”  
  
“What’s the real protocol on people like me?” Bob asks abruptly.   
  
He feels Frank look at him, mouth still open and ready to form his next word before Bob had cut him off. “What do you mean?”  
  
“I mean, like. It’s not meant for you and me to be able to see each other for long term, right? Or at all? Isn’t it supposed to get fixed so that things go back to normal?”  
  
At Frank’s silence, a tiny ball of anger starts forming at the back of Bob’s throat and he has to concentrate on swallowing it back down. He watches Frank stare at nothing in particular, with a slightly panicked tension around his mouth.  
  
“Frank?” Bob prompts, pretty much giving up hope of a reasonable explanation.   
  
Frank’s features twist into a frown. “How – who did you talk to? Is that what Mikey said?”  
  
“Is it going to be like this forever? For the rest of my life, literally?” Frank’s non-answers have set Bob off and he’s on a roll now. It’s strange – he’s angry but mostly in a retaliatory way, like Frank had pulled one over on him and for the first time, it’s Bob who has the upper hand. He hasn’t felt this in a while, this perverse pleasure in prodding people with the right questions while already knowing all the answers. “Why didn’t you switch me out with another watcher? That’s what’s supposed to happen, isn’t it? You stay on your side, I’ll stay on mine, type of thing?”  
  
He makes sure Frank’s meeting his eyes. When Frank remains quiet, Bob keeps his voice steady and asks, “Why are you still  _here_?”  
  
Bob becomes aware of his heart pounding. Frank still hasn’t answered.   
  
“So this is just going to be a conversation with questions, huh?” Frank finally says, obviously trying to avoid the issue. He has a strange little smile on his face, and is still staring straight ahead.   
  
“Frank, I swear,” Bob growls as he gets up to stand over Frank. To do what, he doesn’t know – maybe just for the physical advantage. He doesn’t think he can fight his way out of this one with his fists.  
  
“Fuck. Calm down.” In contrast to Bob, Frank remains on the couch, hugging his shins to his torso and trying to make himself as small as possible. But when he looks up, his face is tense and he doesn’t blink. “Fine. Okay.”  
  
A pause; Frank clears his throat. “Okay. I was lonely. Sometimes I wonder if I was ever meant to be cut out for this. But people make their decisions and I became a watcher, and just like in life, what the fuck else are you supposed to do? You make do with what you’ve got. I was lonely, and I liked you.”   
  
He takes a deep breath. “I was lonely and I  _like_  you. I felt like I missed out, like we could have been good friends or something.” Frank sort of grins, quick and fading immediately, almost more of a grimace than anything else. “I have other charges, but with you, I felt this – ” he exhales with a frustrated sigh. “Never mind. So when Jesse told me what was going to happen, I – I don’t know. Obviously the higher ups aren’t the most organized people in the world, and I just never brought it to their attention that something was wrong.” His voice hardens. “But apparently you know what I was supposed to do after that, so I don’t know why the fuck you’re making me say it out loud.”  
  
“So you stuck around because you were tired of only having your watcher buddies to talk to? Fuck you, Frank,” Bob snaps.   
  
Frank sort of stares at him for a second, then laughs humorlessly and stands up as well. “Why are you so pissed off about this?”   
  
“Are you fucking serious? Because it isn’t  _natural_. Because – because it might be all good for  _you_  to hang around, but it’s my fucking life you’re messing with! It’s,” Bob tries to articulate what he’s trying to say, but he runs out of words.   
  
“Basically you’re saying I’m ruining things for you,” Frank translates. He cuts Bob off: “No, that’s what you’re saying, right?”  
  
“Fuck it. Yeah. Yeah, I am.” Bob makes sure he’s enunciating clearly, and leans in close. “Because you might as well just exist in my fucking imagination, Frank,” he spits out.  
  
Frank narrows his eyes. “Fine. I’m sorry,” he says, as insincere as he can get. “I gotta say, you didn’t exactly seem that eager to get rid of me, but I guess I read the signs wrong. Why didn’t you say all this sooner? Then I could have left you all alone to your lovely fucking life.”  
  
“Things changed,” Bob says harshly, before he can calculate a better answer.   
  
“Oh, I’m fucking dying to know. Like what? Really, like what?” Frank takes a step forward; he’s officially in Bob’s space now, like he knows that if he pushes, then Bob will push back. Of course he fucking knows. A familiar adrenaline starts pooling through Bob’s limbs but with a spike of something new, something that morphs it and makes him more reckless than anything – instead of slamming a fist against Frank’s mouth, Bob wants to do something else wholly inappropriate.   
  
“Like  _what_?” Frank repeats. His eyes are bright, skin still pale. Bob watches as he licks his lower teeth, and suddenly, just like that, it’s as easy as hitting a switch.  
  
“Yeah? You really want to know?” Without letting himself think about it, Bob reaches out, bunches up the collar of Frank’s t-shirt in his fist, and tugs as he leans forward and kisses Frank, hard. It lasts only for a couple seconds and then he’s pulling away, releasing his grip and shoving Frank back a little at the same time. “There.  _Fuck_.”   
  
And then they’re both silent.  
  
It’s funny. People talk about delayed reactions, but Bob feels the looming fallout immediately. Not for the first time, he wishes that time wasn’t so goddamn linear; then he’d be able to skip over this whole mess, just fast-forward through the bullshit and get to the end already. Instead he’s stuck in this slow drag where things are perpetually upside down and inside out, and fuck.  _Fuck_ , he can’t even believe that just happened, and he's the one who perpetuated it.  
  
When Bob glances up, Frank has stumbled away a few paces and is standing with his fists half-clenched by his sides. His tongue peeks out as he licks his lower lip a little, as if to make sure of what happened. “Bob,” he finally says, his voice rougher than usual.   
  
“You asked,” Bob says loudly, and a silent panic engulfs his body. He shakes out his hands, then belatedly wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist. Trying to stand still isn’t working, and suddenly he’s too pissed off to even fake it. He can feel red spreading over the back of his neck, the tips of his ears.   
  
“I gotta get out of here,” he mutters, turning toward the door. He raises his voice and says, “And don’t fucking follow me, for once,” and leaves without meeting Frank’s eyes.   
  
He makes it all the way to the stairs before realizing that Frank actually isn’t following him. Whether it’s because the ‘all clear’ signal is on or because Frank is shirking his duties for the first time, Bob doesn’t know. The uncertainty makes him hesitate with his foot touching down on the first step and one hand gripping the wrought iron railing.   
  
“Hey,” Frank says from behind him. “Hey. Come back.”  
  
Bob turns around. He sees Frank on the landing, looking lost in the open space; he sees the lack of shadow stretching from Frank’s feet, and how his stupid fucking wings don’t block out the sunlight from streaming unhindered through the open front door.   
  
“Bob,” Frank starts, and Bob shakes his head, says, “No,” and continues down the stairs.   
  
  
  
  
When he gets in his car, the air inside is stiflingly hot and he chokes on the compressed, heated air, but it gets easy to ignore when he thinks about his other option. The gas needle balloons up when he turns on the ignition, and he guesses that he has a good fifty miles left before it’ll start running low.   
  
The steering wheel is warm against his hands. He fits his fingers into the grooves, squeezes the grip twice, and punches the bottom curve of the wheel once before shifting into reverse and pulling out of the complex.  
  
  
  
  
It’s dark by the time he gets home again. His phone is displaying five missed calls from Brian, two from Ray, and one from an unknown number, which means that Brian probably roped someone else into calling just in case Bob was specifically ignoring Brian’s number. Bob idly wonders if he’s fired. Probably not. He wouldn’t really give a shit, except he’s pretty sure he and Brian are good friends, and that would kind of be fucked up.   
  
Another thing that’s fucked up, he thinks, staring at the dark green, crackling paint of his front door. His hand moves of its own volition and opens it, revealing nothing but an empty living room and dim light filtering down the hallway from the bedroom. Either Frank is gone or he’s not – Bob tries to prepare himself for both.   
  
He kicks the door shut, probably scaring half the building, and turns the corner into the hallway. “Fuck,” he says, bringing his hand halfway to his chest before thinking better of it.   
  
Frank had been leaning against the wall. He pushes himself off it and says, “Hi.”  
  
Something in Bob’s stomach loosens up. “I thought you’d be gone by now.”  
  
A smile appears on Frank’s face and disappears just as quickly, like a rubber band snapping. “Despite what you heard, I can’t just pawn you off to the first guy I know. The process takes time.”  
  
“ _More_  time, you mean,” Bob corrects flatly. “And now you decide to follow the rules?”  
  
A soft dip appears by the hinge of Frank’s jaw as he cricks it silently, and Bob focuses in on the spot as he says, “Listen. Don’t have any qualms about it just because of what happened earlier, okay. I don’t even fucking want to talk about it, if that’s any consolation to your heavenly conscience, so just, find someone, or anyone, to replace you, or go hang out with your other charges and prevent all the scraped knees that you can handle. I’ll see if I can take on this big, bad world on my own because I did fine tonight – ”  
  
“Can you just, shut up for a second?” Frank finally cuts in. “You fucking annoy me so much sometimes.” He moves forward as he talks, but still, his motives are unclear until he’s already kissing Bob, one hand wrapped the back of Bob’s neck, pulling him down slightly.   
  
It’s quiet, save for the soft noises they’re making. Bob numbly turns his head and somehow manages to murmur, “Frank – ”  
  
“Shut  _up_ ,” Frank says, more urgent this time. He presses his cheek against Bob’s chin, pushes so that Bob is facing straight once more, and kisses him again. Other than the obvious, there are tiny things that turn the kiss slightly left of what Bob is used to. Frank isn’t warm, but he touches Bob like he knows what he’s doing and there are soft, rhythmic breaths that Bob can feel against his face. The smallest of details, probably a trick of his senses, maybe even Frank doing it on purpose, but it’s enough for Bob to suddenly reciprocate; enough for him to ruck up a hand over the back of Frank’s head and push off his hat to get a better angle. His hair is soft, and pulls taut when Bob tugs it a little, and – fuck. This is real. This has to be real.   
  
But Bob’s never been good at convincing himself of things. He breaks away and breathes, “Jesus Christ, what are we – ”  
  
“I don’t know,” Frank answers. He pushes Bob against the wall and repeats it against Bob’s mouth. “I don’t know.”  
  
  
*****  
  
  
“We wrote our names over the redwood tree, hoping to never be apart,” the lead singer of True to Life yell-sings. Bob is tempted to turn down the vocals based on the lyrics alone, but he keeps his hands occupied with a cigarette and a bottle of Stella instead. On second thought, he stubs out the cigarette and surreptitiously waves away the residual smoke, lest Brian indulge in his habit of popping out of nowhere.  
  
“Dude,” Ray yells into his ear. He looks pointedly at the band and then shakes his head. Bob nods in agreement, carefully putting a foot on the edge of the soundboard and pushing until his chair is balancing on its back legs. “I don’t want to judge, but.”  
  
“No, no, this is just really bad, on any level,” Bob yells back. The crowd seems into it though, or maybe they’re just swaying because everyone needed to be hammered to make it through an hour of these kinds of songs. Ray shakes his head again, and this time Bob notices that he doesn’t even have to duck out of the way to avoid a mass of brown curls coming at his face.   
  
“Did you get a haircut?” He makes snipping motions at his own hair.   
  
Ray nods emphatically. “Yeah, a while ago. Where have you been, man?” He taps Bob’s skull lightly. “Living too much in your own head,” he grins. Which is true, since Bob realizes that he can’t even remember the last time he’d hung out with people who weren’t Gerard or Frank. He hadn’t really even seen Ray or Brian outside of work, and Gerard only hangs out because he lives upstairs and both of them are too lazy and uninterested in going anywhere except for their own apartments.   
  
“Bryar!”  
  
Bob only realizes that he’s been zoning out again when Lindsey tugs the nearly empty bottle out of his hand to replace it with a full one. “Seriously, they aren’t bad enough to make you catatonic, are they?”  
  
“They’re pretty fucking bad, you have to admit it.”  
  
Lindsey shakes her head as she leans her hip against the railing of the soundbooth. “You need to get out more. When’s the last time you went out or got laid? What happened to that Darren kid?”  
  
Bob swallows down a gulp of the Stella and it almost goes down his windpipe instead. “He was a kid, that’s what happened,” he answers vaguely, because ‘I’m kind of in the middle of this fucked up thing with my guardian angel’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it.   
  
“Fuck,” Lindsey says with a sympathetic look. She rubs his upper arm a little. For a split second, with her dark hair hanging over her eyes and the house lights turned low as True to Life winds down their song, she resembles Frank in the barest of ways. The moment passes once she smiles big and tucks her bangs over her ear. “All right, we have to find you a distraction.”  
  
“Don’t,” Bob says automatically, before he even realizes that he’s afraid she’s going to turn around and grab the arm of the first dude she sees, but she just turns away and spins back around with another Stella in her hand. He relaxes once he sees it. “Right, so your idea of a distraction is to get hammered?”  
  
“Totally wasted,” she agrees. “Stella’s the only gal you need. Not like you ever act out when you’re drunk, anyway, you just sit there and look more intense than usual.”  
  
“I do not,” Bob counters, but he swigs his beer, opening his throat up now that he’s drinking with a goal in mind. “But whatever, I’m down with that idea.” He drains the rest of the bottle to punctuate this statement and cracks the other one open against the edge of the table as Lindsey smiles at him again, with only a tinge of concern.  
  
“You’re okay though?” she asks, mussing his hair up like he’s a little kid. Ray squeezes the back of his neck too, and then thumps him on the back, and Bob tries to get away from the both of them.  
  
“Shit, it’s like Brian breathed all his mothering genes on you guys,” he declares. Lindsey gives him a playful slap on the face and ambles back over to the bar, where Brian looks like he’s about to die or kill someone out of pure boredom.   
  
Frank is still hanging up in the rafters and his feet swing into Bob’s peripheral vision every once in a while, involuntarily making him look up each time. The music swells to a mistimed breakdown as Bob cranes his head back and chugs his beer. At that exact moment, Frank looks down and they make eye contact. The stage lights don’t quite illuminate all the way up to the rafters, so Frank’s face is cut sharply into shadows, eyes glittering almost black.   
  
Bob’s the one who breaks first, setting the chair onto all four legs again and tugging at Ray’s sleeve. “Hey, do you mind getting me another beer?”  
  
“I don’t know, should I help you be self-destructive?” But Ray goes off and returns with another beer anyway, and one for himself. “Man, this band is just – ”  
  
“They’re killing me, dude,” Bob cuts in, accepting the drink with a nod of thanks. Ray settles onto the chair next to him with a pained expression, which makes Bob feel slightly better, since Ray is open to all kinds of music – “It’s this mix of post-rock and power violence, maybe some d-beat, I don’t know, it’s pretty cool though” – and him being on the same wavelength as Bob means that Bob isn’t just being surly for no reason. Or for a very good reason. Whatever.   
  
That’s pretty much the last coherent thought he has for the rest of the show. He’s aware of Ray passing him over to Brian, who takes him by the arm. “Been a while,” Brian says with a slight grunt, trying to get underneath Bob so that he can hold up the both of them.  
  
“Been a while,” Bob repeats.   
  
“I forgot how annoying and echo-y you get when you’re drunk,” Brian tells him.   
  
He manages to hustle Bob over to his car and shove him through onto the passenger seat. Bob slaps away his hand when he tries to do the seatbelt, because Bob can fucking click a goddamn seatbelt in by himself. Then he passes out with the door still open and doesn’t wake up again until Brian is cursing at him and punching his side, trying to extract him from the car.   
  
“Dude,” Bob says with a frown, slightly more cognizant now. “What the hell?”  
  
“Get out, we’re home.”  
  
The world tilts up and sideways and about four more different directions as Bob’s head lolls backward once Brian manages to make him stand up. “Where’s Frank?” he asks muzzily.  
  
Brian lets out a distracted, “Who?” as he kicks the door shut and begins walking them up the path.   
  
“What?” Bob groans at the sky before Brian can say anything else. “Oh god, I’m so fucked.”  
  
“You’re fucking drunk,” Brian corrects. “And not that I don’t support getting drunk, but it’d be nice if you could warn me next time. Okay, Bob? Buddy?”  
  
“Shut up, I would have done the same for you.” Bob’s words smear together and both of them concentrate on climbing the stairs instead. As soon as they’re in the apartment, he says, “Hey, hey, just put me on the couch.”  
  
“Your room’s like, right there,” Brian says exasperatedly.  
  
Bob insists, “Couch.”  
  
“Whatever you want.” Brian deposits him on the couch and Bob immediately shifts around to lie down and smash his face against the back cushions. He hears Brian walking around in the kitchen before returning to set something on the coffee table.  
  
“There’s some water here, dude. Drink it.”  
  
“Okay,” Bob says into the couch cushion.   
  
“Drink it, I’m serious. You need anything else?”  
  
“No, thank you. You’re the best, Brian, and I’ll shower you with other ass-kissing praises later, but I really just want to pass out right now.”  
  
Brian snorts. “All right. Sleep on your side.” He squeezes Bob’s shoulder and says, “Your keys are in your jacket. Call me if you need anything,” before he leaves, closing the door softly behind him.  
  
There’s enough time for Bob to take two deep breaths and enjoy the quiet until Frank observes, “Jeez, you look tanked.”  
  
“Shouldn’t be that much of a surprise, since you saw it happen.” Bob rolls over, exposing his face to the cold air with a grimace. “What’s going on?”  
  
“I’m on the clock. Charge number four is going to fall asleep at the wheel, but I don’t exactly know when. I don’t want to show up early and watch the whole thing happen.” Frank taps his foot impatiently.  
  
Bob winces. “Is he going to be okay?”   
  
“She,” Frank corrects, “is going to be fine. Bump on the head, little bit of whiplash, is all.”  
  
“Okay. That’s good.” Bob rubs his eyes and it feels really nice, so he keeps doing it. When he stops, there’s two of everything and he’s trying to blink away the double vision. “Hey,” he says, “can we talk about how fucked up on every level this is yet?”  
  
“Later,” Frank says apologetically. He keeps his head ducked down, glancing everywhere but at Bob.   
  
“No, no, it has to be now, I’m drunk enough now.” Bob grabs the collar of Frank’s sweater, making him stumble forward with a soft “oomph” getting pressed out from his chest.  
  
“Bob.” Frank splays a hand over Bob’s chest to support himself. “You know I’m probably just going to try and convince you that it’s not all that fucked up.”  
  
“Ri-ight,” Bob says skeptically, his hand still fisting Frank’s collar. “And how’d you even convince yourself of that?”  
  
“I’m good at denial,” Frank replies with a crooked smile. Keeping his hand on Bob’s chest, he leans down and kisses him.   
  
“Fucking great at denial,” Bob mumbles before he kisses back. He feels Frank smile again, and lifts his chin up; Frank’s fingers tense, stretching the material of Bob’s shirt as his tongue dips into Bob’s mouth. It’s only briefly though, and then Frank presses his lips to Bob’s chin and murmurs, “See you later.”  
  
Once he’s gone, Bob actually does drink the water that Brian had set out for him, and then he takes a short nap with little to tug at his conscience, thanks to the alcohol. When he wakes up, the hangover is already settling in with claws and teeth, but he manages to stumble into the bathroom and yank most of his clothes off before he gets into the shower. He doesn’t bother with the lights or the fan, just blinks away the awkward transition to night vision and jerks off in the faint light from the hallway with the water running and his forehead pressed against the glass door.   
  
Afterwards, as he crawls into his bed, he comes to the conclusion that the thing with him and Frank is like a laughably familiar situation but in new circumstances – like getting dressed in the dark, or trying to write with his left hand.   
  
“I fucking suck at writing with my left hand,” he tells Frank, who comes back just as Bob is about to drift off again.   
  
“I was ambidextrous,” Frank replies without asking for context. He sits on the edge of the bed as Bob files this fact away in the corner of his mind, the same thing he does every time he finds out something new about Frank.  
  
“This is fucking insane, just in case you didn’t know,” Bob informs him.   
  
Frank doesn’t say anything back. Bob falls asleep and dreams about watching Frank’s ankles kicking against the cross-hatching of an amp.  
  
  
*****  
  
  
During Bob’s sophomore year of high school, he’d started hanging out with this group of juniors and seniors. About three from each grade, and it was one of them – a senior, Greg something – who had given Bob his first cigarette, silently offering the box of Marlboro Reds with a fingertip holding the carton open. Bob had slid one out, held it up in thanks, and managed not to cough through the burn in his throat only because he had barely inhaled with each hit. He’d been watching them smoke for several weeks, his own hands stuffed into his pockets, and was glad that he had finally made the leap to joining the ranks.   
  
But in that moment, with smoke filling his mouth and the bitter aftertaste crowding up on the back of his tongue, he didn’t think he’d stick with it. The taste was strangely different from what he’d imagined, and the cigarette looked foreign between his fingers; he thought about what he’d tell Bob of ten minutes before, if he could travel back in time: “ _Eh, it’s no biggie. Not as awesome as you think it’s gonna be_.”   
  
“That’s a really fucking obvious anvil of a story,” Frank comments.   
  
“Fuck you,” Bob says easily, with none of the venom. He takes a long, heavy drag off his cigarette, watching the cherry burn down in a noticeable glow. Beyond that narrow scope of vision, Frank’s face is blurry and indistinct; he has his head resting on Bob’s thigh, smoking his own cigarette.   
  
They’re supposed to be talking about what they’ve been doing – which isn’t much, by any standards, but even so, it feels like Bob’s committing some huge mortal sin. He has bruises on his lower back from being pressed against the kitchen countertops, and teeth marks dotted along the base of his neck, but little else. The dirtiest thing they’ve done happened by accident, when Frank had reappeared in the middle of the night as Bob was lying in bed with his dick in his hand and about to come right there and then, with little regard for the sheets. Bob had opened his eyes and seen Frank staring back at him; it occurred to him that Frank had probably seen this exact scene about a million times over. They’d only broken eye contact when Bob had involuntarily pressed his head back against the wall as he came into his fist with a stifled groan.   
  
Relatively not a big deal, except for the part where it is.   
  
“It’s not a big deal,” Frank finally says, eerily on point with what Bob’s thinking about. Bob can tell Frank is looking at him, so he refocuses and meets his gaze. “It’s not,” he repeats, then asks, “Why are you laughing?”  
  
“I’m not,” Bob tells him, because he isn’t, really. He’s kind of just smiling a little lopsidedly. “But like, what else would you say, you know? Would you really tell me if it  _was_  a big deal?”  
  
“Yes,” Frank says without missing a beat. “Like, look – ” and his own mouth curves up into a quick smile “ – people have blow up dolls and sex swings and stick their dicks into pumpkins and lay down thousands of dollars for hookers and all kinds of weird things like that. I mean, shit. Why is this worse than all that? In comparison, we’re not even doing anything that bad.” He flicks away his cigarette with an adroit snap of his thumb. It disappears midair and he settles his arms over his chest. “I’m just a variation on a blow up doll. So, no big deal.”  
  
All Bob can say in response is, “Don’t call yourself that.”  
  
Frank rolls his eyes a bit. “That wasn’t a passive aggressive cry for a self-esteem therapy session.”  
  
“I know, you fucking asshole.” Bob cuffs Frank’s forehead with his first two knuckles. Frank has been staying concrete more than usual, almost all the time when they’re alone somewhere. Sometimes Bob forgets about Frank’s purpose, the fact that he has a job to do, and that furthers the illusion even more. Bob doesn’t know if it’s a bad thing or not.   
  
He practices in his head, tries to figure out if they sound too harsh or just big words coming from a pathetic guy, but he says them anyway: “This is as far as it goes, though. Just – this.”  
  
“It’s up to you,” Frank says, and he doesn’t sound any different than usual. Just before the silence starts to get awkward, he grins up at Bob and says, “I always knew you only wanted me for my pretty face.”  
  
Bob snorts, “Yeah. Sure.” That, and the fact that Frank knows exactly which of Bob’s buttons to push, but he has an unfair advantage in that area. Frank curls his hand around Bob’s, then fits his fingers between the valleys of Bob’s own.   
  
“Do you even – ” Bob watches Frank turn their hands over.   
  
Frank looks at him. “What?”  
  
“Because you said that, like.” Bob shakes his head and feels stupid, but he barrels on as if the words will rot in his mouth if he keeps them inside for any longer. “’No pain, but no sex’,” he quotes, and is relieved when Frank doesn’t frown in confusion or anything. “Despite your pretty face, I don’t  _actually_  want you to be a blow up doll.”  
  
Frank twists his mouth and hedges, “I know, but it’s different now.”  
  
“How the fuck is it different?” Bob asks, skeptical of everything all over again.   
  
“I’ve always heard stories,” Frank says vaguely, all mystical psychic voice and shit, but he sounds genuinely unsure. “It’s not a hard and fast rule,” he trails off.   
  
Bob tries to pull his hand away but Frank holds on stubbornly. “You’re not even making any sense.”   
  
Frank shifts, staying quiet for a moment. “I always missed being alive. I miss – I miss feeling things. Ice cubes, dirt, the fucking sun on my face.” He coughs out a laugh and shakes his head. “God, this is going to sound stupid, but it’s different, with you. I’m not just saying that emotionally, but like – physically. It always has been, and it’s getting stronger, too. I just didn’t know how to tell you.” He tightens his grip on Bob’s hand. Bob recalls that fascinated expression when they were palm-to-palm that one night.  _You’re humming._  
  
Bob finally puts it together. He says it slowly: “And you’ve heard stories about this kind of thing happening.”  
  
“Yeah. No first hand accounts, and I always figured they were more myths than anything else, but.” Frank turns their hands over again.   
  
“Then why is it happening now? To you?”   
  
“I have no idea,” Frank says heavily. “It’s kind of scaring the shit out of me. But not enough to, you know.”   
  
 _To leave? To stop this? To be the better guy and say no?_  “How many watchers there?” Bob inquires, changing the subject.  
  
“As many as there needs to be,” Frank hedges.   
  
“How is this going to go?”  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“What do we do?”  
  
Frank brings their hands to his mouth and speaks quietly against the bones in Bob’s wrist. “I don’t know.”


	6. Acceptance

**ACCEPTANCE**  
  
  
“Fucking divas,” Brian mutters under his breath as the band clears out into their van and the brake lights blink red in the dark. “I swear to god, some days I just want to,” and the rest of his sentence dissolves into what are probably elaborate plans to orchestrate mass destruction of the band as he acts out the universal sign for strangling someone.  
  
“Yeah,” Bob agrees as he watches the taillights turn the corner. They trudge back into the club through the rear door. “I think the only thing they didn’t ask for was a fucking Shetland pony. And fuck that shit about the customer always being right, because some of their fans were assholes too.”  
  
“Man, fuck this entire night.” Brian locks the door and glances up at Bob. “What was with that guy during the opening band? I didn’t hear the whole story.”  
  
Bob feels another burst of anger flare up at Brian’s mention. “Same old. He was wasted, giving Alicia a hard time. I tried to kick him out, but he didn’t back off, so Worm had to step in and even then he wouldn’t give until Zack showed up, too.”   
  
“Murphy’s fucking law,” Brian grunts. They emerge from backstage and survey the damage. Apparently Bob was right about the crowd being full of assholes, seeing as how there’s garbage and all kinds of junk everywhere. Ray’s in the middle of it all, looking around resignedly.   
  
“Where’d everyone go?” Bob asks, since there had been at least four people hanging around when Brian and Bob had gone to see the band out and now there’s just empty space and silence.   
  
Brian waves dismissively. “I told them to take off. We can clear up tomorrow, the next show isn’t until the middle of next week.”  
  
“Wow, Brian. How magnanimous,” Bob says in fake awe. “But it looks like Ray didn’t get the memo.”  
  
“Your mom didn’t get the memo,” Ray shoots back with a grin.   
  
“Okay, I’m just going to stop this right now and kick you guys out,” Brian cuts in, and what’s surprising is that he actually does shoo them out –  _shoos_  them, with flappy hands and everything; Bob regrets that he doesn’t carry around a camcorder – and both Bob and Ray end up standing outside, dumbly holding onto their coats as Brian says something about locking up from the inside and leaving through the back, having parked his car on the other side of the building.   
  
“He’s getting too Brian-y again,” Ray comments as they huddle into their coats and start down the street.   
  
“Think we need to make more bumper stickers and put them up all over the walls or what?”  
  
Ray huffs out a giggle that manifests itself in a burst of white fog. They’re just passing underneath a streetlight when Bob sees that someone is walking toward them, going in the opposite direction. Bob slows his pace and starts walking behind Ray to give the person a wide berth, but as they’re passing, he hears a voice say, “Fuck, it’s you.”  
  
Both Ray and Bob come to a stop, and Bob briefly notices that Frank has been following them. By now, this fact seems only natural and isn’t surprising at all. What is surprising, however, is that Bob recognizes the guy as the one who’d been a complete dick during the show. “Jesus,” Bob says exasperatedly. “Shouldn’t you be passed out in a pool of puke by now?”  
  
“Fuck you, I’ve been waiting for your ass,” the guy scowls, obviously still – or even more – drunk than earlier on.   
  
“Hey, come on. We’re not trying to get into shit, so leave it alone,” Ray cuts in. He’s closer to the guy and Bob tries to pull him back surreptitiously, but Ray either doesn’t notice or doesn’t listen. Bob spares a glance at Frank; Frank just looks back silently, his eyes big and solemn, not giving anything away.  
  
When the guy fake-lunges toward Ray – Jesus, who the fuck does that in real life? – Ray flinches back. It’s a small movement, only noticeable because of the sound of Ray’s heel stuttering against the sidewalk. The guy still sneers, “Yeah, that’s what I thought, motherfucker,” like he’s some real hardcore motherfucker.  
  
For Bob, it’s an automatic impulse to step in front of Ray and take over the scene. “Hey. Chill out.” It’s not smart to goad the guy, he knows this. There’s almost nothing worse than a mean, angry douchebag with a bunch of alcohol in his system, but it’s a hard fucking thing for Bob to hold back.  
  
“Don’t fucking tell me to chill out,” the guy snaps.  
  
“You’re drunk and I’m tired of this, so let’s all just call it a night and go home,” Bob grits out pointedly, and now it’s Ray trying to keep him in place.  
  
The guy sways and points at Bob. “I paid money for that fucking show and this is how I get treated? Fuck you guys, and fuck that club. Bunch of dumbshits who can’t do their job,” he mutters.  
  
“Well, what the fuck. You must be more of a dumbass than I thought. You started shit inside a club with security and staff all around you, what did you think was going to happen?” Bob shoots back before he can help himself.  
  
He’s unprepared for both the timing of the punch and the angle it comes in at, knuckles slamming up against the underside of his jaw so hard that his teeth grind together with a sickening crack and he stumbles backward as his head snaps with the motion, throwing off all equilibrium. Ray steadies him immediately, yelling, “What the fuck is wrong with you?!”  
  
“Fucking pussies,” the guy growls.  
  
“Fuck  _off_.” Bob blindly shoves Ray to the side. It takes him two steps to get close enough to swing his fist into the guy’s stomach, and then against his mouth a split second later, heart beating overtime with a sudden wild energy.   
  
The guy goes down immediately. “Get the fuck out of here before I fucking kill you,” Bob yells. He doesn’t even realize that Ray’s holding him back by the arms, almost making his elbows touch behind him, until he tries to kick the fucking asshole’s stomach and finds that he can’t quite reach. He mindlessly fights against Ray’s grip long enough for the guy to get his bearings, apparently, because he stirs but it’s too dark to make out his movements - there’s only a slow scraping noise as Bob sees a shadowy blob sit up.   
  
Suddenly, a beer bottle comes flying at them and almost hits Bob right in the fucking face, but due to his insistent struggles to escape from Ray’s grasp – _and Frank_ , Bob thinks vaguely – his foot rolls off the edge of the curb and he stumbles to the side just in time, bringing Ray with him. Instead of breaking against his forehead, the bottle flies past harmlessly and shatters somewhere off in the dark.   
  
“Fuck you,” the guy yells. The words sound wet, like he’s talking through a mouthful of liquid.   
  
Bob hopes he broke every fucking tooth. He’s ready to charge back onto the sidewalk, but Ray pulls him down the street with no signs of letting go. Ray’s a strong fucking guy when he wants to be, so Bob compromises and walks backwards, unwilling to turn away from the sight of the guy still sprawled on the ground.   
  
They pass two streetlamps before Bob finally turns around and starts walking on his own, shaking off Ray’s grip, and then it’s like he’s stepped out of scene and back into the real world, where it’s cold enough to have a snowfall overnight; where he realizes his knuckles are killing him and the adrenaline dies down in his veins and his gums start up with a slow ache that steadily gets worse with every step.   
  
“I’m giving you ride a home,” Ray says in a shaky voice, slightly higher than usual. “Fuck, what the hell was that.”  
  
“Don’t bother.” Bob stares up ahead, where he can just make out Frank’s wings, and how his head is bowed, chin tucked down toward his chest.   
  
“Bob,” Ray tries, and Bob interrupts with, “Drop it. I’m fine.”  
  
It only occurs to him then to touch his mouth; he does, gingerly, pressing down on his teeth with his finger and nudging the tip of his tongue around. He had bitten off a chunk of his inner cheek and it’s bleeding steadily, but other than the bruise on his chin, that seems to be the only visible injury.   
  
A blot of dark-colored spit lands on the street. When Ray huffs a little, Bob tries to make up for being short with him and shows him his hand, which is covered with diluted blood. He says, “See what I get for being chivalrous?”  
  
“I could have fucking taken care of myself, Bob,” Ray says stiffly. “It’s been – like, you always make fights  _your_  fights.”  
  
“Sorry,” Bob replies, a little stung at his response. “I was just joking.” He takes the hem of his t-shirt and wipes off the blood as they reach Ray’s car and come to a stop.   
  
“I’m taking you home,” Ray states in that same voice.   
  
Bob sighs. “No, dude, you’re not. This kind of thing happens every once in a while, and you know that so stop freaking out. Remember when Brian got jumped a few years ago? And some asshole tried to get at Lindsey when she finished a late shift?”  
  
Ray finally deflates a little. “I wonder if that guy ever got his vision back. I mean, her can of pepper spray was practically empty after that whole episode.”  
  
“Yeah, well, I fucking hope he’s permanently blind. All I’m saying is that I’m fine. I need to get my car home anyway, so I’m just going to go and try not to punch any more assholes on the way, okay?”  
  
“Fine.” Ray crosses his arms. “But at least promise me you’ll ice your face when you get there. And call me.”  
  
“I promise.” Bob’s even pretty sure that he still has an old bag of peas somewhere in the freezer. Ray studies him before leaning in for a hug. Bob slaps his back half-heartedly. “Get out of here, Toro.”  
  
“Call me,” Ray repeats. “I”ll see you later,” he calls cautiously as Bob makes his way down the street to his own car.  
  
Frank is already sitting in the passenger seat with his back curled into the corner. Bob silently turns the key and waits for the jittering engine to calm down a bit.   
  
“He could have had a gun, you know,” Frank says in a low voice.   
  
Bob pushes the parking brake down and begins to drive. He looks around carefully when he passes the spot where he’d last seen that fucking asshole, but there’s nothing around save for some free-floating trash and the occasional duo of people walking on the sidewalk. “Well, he didn’t.”  
  
Frank is silent. Then he says, “But he could have.”  
  
“He fucking didn’t, okay? Christ, why does everyone keep harping on about this?”  
  
“Because you should have ended it sooner!” Frank explodes. “You should have ended it before anyone got hurt. Do you know how fucked up you could’ve gotten if I hadn’t done anything? You should have been the bigger man and walked  _away_.”  
  
“Oh, don’t give me that bullshit,” Bob scoffs harshly. “That fucking bigger man thing. Jesus, yeah, maybe swallowing your pride and walking away is being the bigger man, but that didn’t happen. How many times have you told me that you can’t change the past? Well, I can’t either, so back the fuck off.”  
  
The rest of the ride passes in silence, but it only takes a few more minutes to get home. Bob jogs to his building and hurries up the stairs while shivering a little at the cold gasps of wind seeping through the thin cotton of his shirt.   
  
When he reaches the landing, he finally sighs and starts to say, “Shit, I’m sorry, I’m being – ” but he realizes that Frank isn’t around to hear it. The only things he sees are the flickering lamps that light the paths around the buildings and the empty walkways.   
  
“ – dumb,” he finishes to himself. His mouth is swollen and it’s getting painful to talk. “Frank?”  
  
Still, nothing around him responds. He stands there and waits, as if he’ll jinx Frank’s return if he moves. There continues to be no sign of Frank, though, so Bob eventually lets himself into the apartment and closes the door.  
  
  
*  
  
  
Frank comes back sometime in the middle of that night, but he kind of ignores Bob for the rest of the week, only engaging in conversation if he has to, or offering up a few sullen gems like, “watch out,” and, “fucking look where you’re going, dude.”  
  
He’s gone when Bob gets home after a quick dinner with Ray and Brian on Friday night. Before the meal, Brian had studied the bruise and slight residual swelling on Bob’s chin, but he hadn’t said anything about it because Brian knew when to keep his mouth shut. He’d also watched Bob to see how he took to eating; Bob had tried not to wince every time a stray bit of seasoning or spices dissolved into the sore spots in his mouth, because there’s some part of him that still wants people to believe that he has some self-preservation left.  
  
The apartment is a fucking mess, although it’s not clear whose fault it is. Bob kicks some DVD cases out of the way and flicks on the light to the bathroom, grimacing a little as his reflection becomes illuminated. Not that there’s anything glaringly disgusting, but he’s just projecting his shitty mood all over the place. He lifts up his chin and pokes at the darkened bruise, then opens his mouth, hooks two fingers at the corner, and tries to examine the inside of his cheek to see how it held up to a regular meal. It’s still a little torn up, with layers of white skin cells slowly healing it over.   
  
“Does it still hurt?” The question comes as just a disembodied voice from the other side of the doorframe. It feels like the first innocuous, complete sentence Frank has said in days.  
  
Bob spends a little more time trying to see the wound from a better angle before straightening up and washing his hands. “Not really. Just a little sore.” He dries his hands and comes out, turning off the light with a flick of his thumb.  
  
“Sorry for being a dick,” Frank says outright, as soon as they’re face to face, and Bob reciprocates after a startled pause.   
  
“Yeah, me too.”   
  
He offers a crooked smile, which Frank returns. As soon as Bob closes the door to the bathroom behind him, Frank starts kissing him, shoving forward so that his knees knock against Bob’s and they both stumble a little, almost pushing over the halogen lamp standing in the corner.   
  
“Wait – hold on – ” Bob fumbles for the room light switch for a good ten seconds. He abandons the search, instead cupping both hands around Frank’s face and kissing him determinedly. Frank tugs off his hoodie, which is something new, but Bob goes with it, peeling off his own jacket.   
  
He holds his breath when Frank rubs the heel of his palm over Bob’s crotch and then pushes their hips together like they’ve been doing this for years. Before he can wonder what the fuck is going on, Frank starts leading them in uneven steps, which is also something that’s new, because Bob is usually the one who leads, but once again he goes along with it. They end up by the bed and Bob finally grunts in surprise when Frank shoves him down onto it and goes for his belt.   
  
“What the fuck, Frank?” Bob splutters once Frank’s intention becomes clear. He stares down at Frank’s fingers, and how they’ve already undone the buckle. “Dude, are you kidding? I’m not letting an angel go down on me.” And Bob covers his crotch with both hands in an instinctively juvenile maneuver.   
  
All movement ceases. Frank’s fingers become still, curled around the buckle of Bob’s belt and mimicking its shape, as if he too is just catching himself. “Don’t laugh,” Bob warns, but there’s already a red flush creeping over his face and he can feel his ears getting hot.   
  
“I wasn’t going to. Maybe for a second there in the beginning, but not anymore.” Frank sits back cross-legged, then angles his knees up and wraps his arms around them, like he’s embarrassed but trying not to let it show. From this view, Bob can barely see the tufts of white from Frank’s wings; he can even almost pretend that Frank is just a normal dude, sitting on Bob’s bed at the end of the night as both of them fidget around the idea of what the endgame should be.   
  
Frank eventually asks, “Why not?”  
  
“What do you mean, ‘why not’?” Bob really wishes his hard-on would go away, because then maybe this whole speech would sound a lot more credible. “It’s just wrong and I would feel like God – if there is a God, since you won’t even tell me. Anyway. I’d feel like he would be shaking his head at me for eternity as I shovel the coalmines in hell, okay. You’re a heavenly fucking being, I don’t want to mess with that shit. Just because I got a little beat up doesn’t change that.”  
  
Frank rolls his eyes. “How many times do I have to tell you that I’m not a heavenly being, Jesus Christ.”  
  
“Still,” Bob shoots back. “I just can’t. I’m sorry.”  
  
“So let me get this straight.” Frank counts out a finger with the first syllable of each sentence. “Making out is okay. Beejays are not. Touching your dick is okay. Touching it with my mouth is not.”   
  
And then he looks like he wants to clap his hand over his mouth, because yeah, Frank had given Bob a handjob last week, in the dark of the kitchen when Bob had gotten up in the middle of the night to get a cup of water. He’d just stubbed his toe against the wall and was limping around when Frank had muttered, “Sorry, I – ” from the dining table.   
  
“No, it was me,” Bob had said, waiting for his vision to adjust to the dark. He fumbled through the cupboard and extracted a cup from the mess. “Gotta eat more carrots or something. What’s the vitamin that improves your night vision again?”  
  
Water had gone everywhere when Frank knocked the cup out of Bob’s hand and kissed him roughly. It’d been easy for him to shove a hand up Bob’s shirt, and then down past the elastic of Bob’s boxers. It had been even easier for Bob to just let it happen, closing his eyes and jerking his hips against Frank’s fist. The aftermath hadn’t actually taken place, because Frank had muttered something about goddamn fucking sleepwalkers and blinked out, leaving Bob loose-kneed and reeling.   
  
And now, Bob could yell something – he could yell something and this could escalate quickly, like every argument between them seems to, but it seems like they only ever fight about stupid things and this situation somehow doesn’t seem trivial enough to yell about.   
  
“You made the same point twice,” he just says lamely.  
  
Frank’s hands drop to the mattress as he abandons the idea of keeping score of whatever bullshit boundaries Bob has decided to hastily set up, now that they’ve gotten to this juncture. “Anyway, we,” Bob begins, then fails at a sentence. “Frank,” he tries again, failing a second time.   
  
Instead of being the usual temperamental shit, Frank is looking at him with wide eyes, and not even in his normal, disingenuous way. This is – this is sort of intense, like he can see something in Bob that isn’t detectable to others. It’s unnerving to think that Frank knows something about him that he doesn’t even know himself.   
  
A flash of color blinks into Bob’s vision as Frank bites absently at his lower lip in a brief glint of teeth, making it bloom a pale red. “You’re really serious,” he states.  
  
“Yeah.” Bob finally takes his hands away from his crotch and pushes himself upright. “I – ”  
  
“You can’t.”  
  
“Yeah. I can’t.”  
  
“Hm.” It’s a noncommittal noise, but Frank is still gazing at Bob like he’s taking note of things, stowing away bits and pieces of whatever it is he’s seeing. “Okay,” he says simply.  
  
Bob can’t help but be a little surprised and maybe even disappointed. “Okay?”  
  
“Yeah.” Frank pauses, then asks, “But do me a favor?”  
  
He looks serious, and Bob’s reasonably sure that the favor won’t be a sarcastic suggestion to kiss someone’s ass or fuck himself or anything like that, so he nods and says, “Sure.” And it’s not like Bob is naïve enough to believe that he thinks he knows what‘s coming or anything, but it catches him off-guard when Frank says, “Touch my face.”  
  
Bob blinks at him. “What?”  
  
“I – touch my face. Just, here.” In a swift movement, Frank grabs Bob’s right wrist with both of his hands and brings it up so that Bob’s palm lays flat against the plateau of his cheek. “Not so stiff,” he orders, trying to shake the rigidity out of Bob’s fingers. “Can you – pretend that I’m human, okay? Just for a second. Pretend I’m real.”  
  
“You  _are_  real,” Bob responds immediately, half-annoyed, half-something else, something he isn’t quite ready to face yet. He doesn’t know who he’s trying to reassure.   
  
As he’s thinking, some of the tension curls out of the thin lines of muscle and he fits the shape of Frank’s cheek against his hand, feeling the smooth skin, the slight ridge and dip of bone. His thumb moves back and forth and back again, almost involuntarily. Almost.   
  
Frank sighs; Bob feels it more than he hears it, and he blinks at how he can sense the change in the way Frank’s shoulders are set, how his breaths push out more slowly.  _Everything_  moves more slowly, Frank’s eyelids slipping down, his face turning into Bob’s touch just slightly. The bedside clock blares red digits that shiver around its edges, giving the impression of wanting to change, but the numbers remain frozen and shimmering. 1:17, and Frank’s hands are still hanging limp from Bob’s wrist. 1:17, and Bob stares at Frank, at the way his wings are just white blurs in Bob’s periphery.   
  
1:17, and Bob knows himself well enough to identify that thick feeling in his throat.   
  
Then, suddenly, Frank announces, “Right,” in a clipped voice. Things stutter and seem to speed up again, spinning forward to make up for that weird lull. Frank releases his grip on Bob’s wrist and, as his arm falls away, leans forward, presses a fleeting kiss to Bob’s forehead, and then blinks out.   
  
It’s way too much action for Bob to process at once. By the time he can swallow what happened, Frank is long gone and the bedroom feels strangely empty and expansive in his wake.   
  
Bob sits on the bed for what feels like a long time but is only ten minutes, according to the clock. The usual paranoia about Frank being gone passes relatively fast and still, he sits there. Going out and doing menial tasks like cleaning the kitchen or brushing his teeth seem like stupid, petty things after realizing that he’s sort of in love with his guardian angel, and he’d rather end the day now instead of puttering around uselessly.   
  
He tries not to consider the fact that Frank knows.  
  
The room swoops into blacks and greys once Bob gets up to switch off the lights. He feels his way to the bed and kicks off his pants before climbing into bed. Sleep doesn’t come, obviously, and he curses to himself anyway while alternately tossing and turning and lying still. It’s during one of the latter phases that Frank’s voice emerges from the darkness.   
  
“Sorry about that.”  
  
Bob twitches so hard he almost falls off the bed. “Jesus  _Christ_ , Frank.”   
  
He sits up, scrubs at his eyes with one fist, and is contemplating swinging himself out of bed to turn the lights on when Frank crawls onto the mattress and collapses on the other side, pressing himself into the wall as much as he can. He’s lying on his stomach and one wing is angled up, a little open. Bob watches for a minute, but the back of Frank’s head doesn’t tell him anything.  
  
Eventually he starts to feel like staying awake is an effort. He lies back down and pulls the covers up to his chin. On second thought, he moves onto his side, bunching the comforter out of the way before he speaks.   
  
“Where did you go?”  
  
Frank doesn’t answer. He doesn’t move, either.   
  
Bob is shifting onto his back again when Frank says, “Don’t worry about it.”   
  
“Fuck you,” Bob mutters, half-hoping that Frank won’t hear, or that he’ll pretend not to. He stares into the shadows, and at the dull shine of his dresser in the light of the streetlamp that sneaks through the curtains.   
  
Frank quietly says, “I panicked.”  
  
"Really? I couldn't tell," Bob bites out before he can stop himself, and he’s glad when Frank doesn't retaliate with more sarcasm.  
  
He begins again, more mildly this time. "At which part? There are a lot of potential parts. This whole fucking thing, for example."  
  
"Well. There's the part where I'm an angel. Technically speaking, with the wings and all." Frank pauses for so long that Bob thinks this is the end, but he finally continues: "And then there's the part where I think I'm in love with you and stuff. And you me." He clears his throat. "Technically speaking."  
  
"Technically speaking,” Bob echoes after a beat. He doesn’t deny it – he just holds his breath, feeling like something should happen with that admission. Some worldly consequence, some more mystical magic shit, or at least a small explosion or something. But everything stays unmoving and quiet, the same as ever.  
  
"Mm hmm. So, yup. Here we are."  
  
“Technically speaking,” Bob says again, rolling over to face Frank. “What does that even mean?”  
  
They look at each other, and then the corner of Frank’s eyes crinkle up and Bob feels a bubble of helpless laughter pop in his throat. He sits up and picks his pants off the floor, digging the box of cigarettes out of his back pocket as his belt clinks loosely. It takes him a few tries to extract one, fingertips slipping clumsily over the filters. His head feels curiously light, like he’s spinning while sitting still, like someone has grabbed the world inside his head and given it a good shake.  
  
He finally lights a cigarette. “There’s got to be – ” Bob scrubs a hand over his face, and it’s only then that he realizes he’s forgotten to shave for a couple days running. He knows it's a stupid suggestion, some deus ex machina designed only to work at the ends of Hollywood blockbusters, but he says it anyway, with a dry smile: “Don’t you – can’t you get rid of your wings? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? That’s what Hollywood tells me, at least.”  
  
Frank says something too quiet to be heard; he seems to realize it halfway through and repeats, more loudly, “That’s not how it works.”  
  
"It was a dumb idea anyway," Bob says quickly, and he feels stupid and ignorant for asking. He exhales a plume of smoke and watches it curl up toward the ceiling light.  
  
  
*****  
  
  
Bob lets his phone battery drain out and calls in sick for the rest of the week, just because. Plus, he doesn’t want anyone else asking about the now greenish-yellowish bruise that mars the expanse of skin on the underside of his chin. Maybe shutting the whole world out is overkill though, because he wakes up one morning, aware of the day but not the date, to an empty room and someone knocking on the front door.   
  
He yawns and pushes his face into the pillow, which smells like greasy hair and old cigarettes, but the knocking continues. The yelling comes in a little later. “Jesus,” Bob mutters, finally extracting himself from the sheets and padding down the hallway.   
  
Gerard is in the middle of hollering Bob’s name when Bob opens the door and the vowel gets a lot clearer and louder. “ – oooooooob! Oh.” He blinks. “Hey. You’re alive.”  
  
“Dude, what.” Bob squints. The sky is void of clouds but there’s a sharp bite to the air, and he covers one foot with the other, trying to rub some heat between them. “When the fuck did it get this cold?”  
  
“Um. When the weather decided to get cold, I don’t fucking know. How are you?”  
  
“I’m fine,” Bob says slowly. “Why?”  
  
“Always with the suspicion, what’s up with that?” Gerard shoves his way into the apartment, wrinkling his nose at how dirty it is. He takes in Bob’s appearance, too. “Shit, are you alive? You look like the undead.”  
  
Bob just grunts and shuts the door.   
  
“So you’re alive,” Gerard says again.  
  
“Yes. Yes, yes, stop asking me that.”  
  
“I don’t know, it looked a little iffy for a while there. Someone stopped by a couple days ago,” Gerard tells him.   
  
“Who?” Bob grumps.  
  
“A guy named Brian. He wanted to get Maria to open the door to make sure you weren’t dead or anything, but she wasn’t in. Then some other dude showed up and spent like ten minutes trying to see in through the window. I thought they were hitmen or something.”  
  
There’s nothing in the coffee can except for a tiny banana-shaped pool of grounds at the bottom. Bob dumps it all into the filter and shoves the pot into its space, hoping that it’s enough for at least half a cup. “Fucking Brian, man, Jesus. What’s with the cavalry?”  
  
“Besides the fact that no one’s seen or heard from you for days, and you look, smell, and seem to feel like shit?” Gerard leans against the living room/kitchen partition and watches Bob.   
  
“A+ for the observations, dude. Big fucking deal. You turn into a hermit every few weeks, so I don’t get why I need the third degree.”   
  
“But people expect me to pull that kind of stunt,” Gerard says earnestly. “It’s different for you.” He chews on his lip and says, “I think Brian was pretty worried.”  
  
“I’m just tired,” Bob responds without looking at Gerard.   
  
And it sounds like a stupid excuse, but he is. Evidently, it’s the same feeling he gets every time; in high school, when he’d discovered his masochistic tendencies by getting a hopeless crush on James Gabriel, a weird band kid with a first name as a last name, who had had a girlfriend for two years, who became Bob’s best friend, who Bob had no business having a hopeless crush on. In college, when he’d actually cultivated a steady relationship with Mike Leonard that consisted mostly of fighting and fucking and trying to piss each other off. After college, with Kate Guillory, an on and off thing that kept him on his toes with the high highs and the fucking low lows, a pattern they both got tired of before it could work out.   
  
Now, with Frank, and Bob knows that it can’t end well but he isn’t willing to let it go.   
  
“Oh. Oh, shit.” Gerard gets his epiphany face as he studies Bob. “Did you – did you break up with whoever you were seeing?”  
  
Jesus, he’d completely forgotten about that particular lie. Bob just stands and watches the coffee percolate. He’s getting wary of lying to every goddamn person he knows, but it seems like second nature to just nod silently and pour what little coffee there is into a mug. It fills up a bit more than halfway, and he’ll take that.   
  
“I’m fine,” he sighs again, and tips his head back as he points to his chin, figuring he’ll just blame the shitty state of things on the obvious. “Things just got a little rough.”  
  
“Eww,” Gerard grimaces, but he leans in close to examine it anyway. “That’s from the – the ex?” he asks carefully.   
  
“Sure,” Bob shrugs. One of the things he appreciates about Gerard is his ability to show concern without annoyingly picking things apart. Right now, Bob can practically see Gerard’s mind whirring away, trying to match the colors of the bruise to sample numbers at the nearest paint store.  
  
Gerard confirms this suspicion by offering, “It’s a really cool blend of colors, though.”  
  
“Yeah, I thought so too.” Bob cracks a small smile. Suddenly, he’s glad that Gerard is over here. He offers up the cup of coffee as penance but Gerard just waves it away.   
  
“Mikey brought some over for me this morning, but thanks. You look like you need a pick me up.”  
  
“A pick me up that isn’t hard drugs or a natural high,” Bob grumbles. They stand in silence as Bob sips at the coffee, and Gerard shuffles backward before Bob’s half done.   
  
“I’ll leave you alone, then. I totally understand wanting to be a hermit and all, I just wanted to check in. Solitude is healthy sometimes.” Gerard nods, and Bob’s smile gets bigger on its own.  
  
“You know I live for your approval.”   
  
“Call me if you need anything, okay? Or like, throw something at the ceiling. Make a hole in it. Poke your head through and say hi. I don’t care.”  
  
“Okay,” Bob agrees. He surprised that he finds the image in his head genuinely funny, because it feels like such a foreign impulse to laugh. “And hey.”   
  
Gerard turns around. With the mug covering his mouth, Bob says, “Thanks. I appreciate it.”  
  
“Yeah, no problem, man. Take it easy.”   
  
Once Bob hears the door close, he swigs the rest of the coffee and is putting the empty mug into the sink when there’s a soundless sonic boom under his feet, kind of what he’s always imagined a nuclear blast to be like – just the explosion of the mushroom cloud with no sound, like the world is shaking and spitting out what it can’t handle. At first he thinks that it’s an earthquake and he grips onto the counter with both hands, trying dumbly to recall what they taught during the safety drills at school but it seems his mind has turned to dust and all he can do is curl his thumbs and stare into the sink.   
  
Then the shaking stops and Frank materializes and lands right beside Bob in a graceless heap. The first thing Bob notices is that there’s fucking blood tingeing his wings, soft waves of red washing up on the outermost feathers, but even as Bob is trying to process this sight, the color disappears, swallowed up once again by white.   
  
“What – ” Bob starts, and Frank squints up at him. “Frank, you – ”  
  
It takes a moment to match that noise to the library of sounds in his head. Frank is laughing. Bob drops to his knees and scrapes Frank’s hair off his forehead as Frank pushes himself up into sitting position.   
  
“Jesus Christ. Are you okay? Was that blood?” Bob hisses, sort of patting his hands over Frank’s face, his neck, his shoulders, reassuring himself of the solidity he feels under his fingertips.   
  
“Bob, that was – ” Frank’s voice cracks and he tugs Bob close. Bob catches him awkwardly before shifting them so that Frank can wrap his arms around Bob’s back. “Bob, that was the stupidest idea ever,” he murmurs, right against Bob’s ear, still hissing laughter.   
  
Bob accepts that there’s nothing he can do, that it’s out of his hands. He starts laughing too, the kind that scrapes up out of his chest like something sharp, and squeezes Frank briefly. "Fuck. What were you even trying to  _do_? Please don't tell me you tried some crazy bullshit idea."  
  
"I might have tried some crazy bullshit idea," Frank confesses, pulling back a little so that he can look at Bob.  
  
Bob traces his thumb over Frank’s eyebrow, over the slope and the arch and the fall. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he’s thinking about the fact that everything’s falling apart – he's been going on like this for too long, making up the rules on the spot, drawing and redrawing lines that get erased or stepped over or just completely fucking ignored. That he could only go on like that for so long.  
  
“What happened, happened,” Frank says, strangely a fitting response to what’s going through Bob’s head. “Shh,” he says exaggeratedly. “A man needs his secrets. It didn’t work anyway, forget about it. I’m serious,” he adds when Bob opens his mouth.   
  
They sit in silence for a while. Then Bob says, “Well. We’re fucking idiots.”  
  
“Hey,” Frank says mildly. “Speak for yourself.”  
  
And Bob isn’t going to deny it: he’s been trying to figure out ways to make this work, no matter how stupid it seems. He laughs a little, thinking back to when he and Frank had been cautiously kissing for one of the first times, when he’d told himself,  _this is as far as it’ll go_.   
  
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” he declares, trying for the part of the swooning dame to Frank’s tough guy act, but his voice sounds kind of wrecked and it falls flat.   
  
“Yeah, well.” Frank catches Bob staring and does a double take. “God. It’s like the beginning all over again. You thought you were being stealthy by staring at me all the time when you thought I wouldn’t notice,” he muses.   
  
“Because this is such an easy thing to get used to,” Bob retorts as he glances at Frank’s wings, once again checking for the blood he’s sure he’d seen. “I mean, seriously, are you sure you’re okay? What the fuck happened?”   
  
Of course, Frank just shakes his head. Half of Bob feels like punching a wall; the other half is still exhausted. He just fucking wants to sleep until this is all over, so he doesn’t have to go through this blind and with both hands tied behind his back.   
  
He settles for letting his shoulders slump wearily. “Okay, fine. What now?”  
  
“I don’t know. I’m not your fucking life coach, man. Just do your thing. Bob Bryar wouldn’t walk around on eggshells.” Frank points emphatically to the floor to drive his point in. “Bob Bryar wouldn’t stand meekly in front of the public. Bob Bryar would take a fucking shower, is all I’m saying.”  
  
“Fucking, cut it out.” Bob swats at Frank’s arm until he tucks it back against his chest with a smile that’s the tiniest bit too big. “Jesus, you’re not my motivational speaker either.”  
  
“Yeah, whatever.” Frank finally makes to get up and bounds to his feet with no problem, but Bob notices how stiff his wings are, curled in close to his body and angled upwards. “I just want you to snap out of it.”  
  
Bob gets to his feet as well. He’s beginning to wonder if what he saw was just an illusion – the red of Frank’s wings, the paleness of his face, how his hands were clammy where they had clutched at Bob’s neck. Theoretically, it’d be easier to skate along the surface of things like they’re doing now, but Bob finds himself getting weighed down by what’s unspoken and what he just plain doesn’t know or understand.   
  
Still, he holds up his end of the conversation. “Then consider myself snapped, or whatever. I’m going to work.”  
  
“Good,” Frank approves. He repeats it: “Good. Then maybe I can finally get some work done around here.”  
  
They’re facing each other, standing close enough that the height difference is prominent. Frank has to tilt his head up a little to meet Bob’s eyes; he smiles at Bob almost shyly, then reaches up to cuff his chin a bit. “Ready?”  
  
 _Fuck it_ , Bob thinks, and says out loud, “You know, we’re being really fucking casual about this.”   
  
“I know,” Frank answers, still with that smile. “I know, but it’s better than the other option, isn’t it?”  
  
“Yeah,” Bob says wearily, after a pause. “Yeah, why not.” He walks to the bathroom, feeling the ghost of shaking floorboards underneath his feet.   
  
By the time he gets out of the shower, Frank has wiped the mirror free of condensation. Bob towels off his hair and dresses quickly. When he’s about to leave, Frank jumps onto his back, wrapping his arms around Bob’s neck and locking his knees in by his hips.   
  
“Oof,” Bob grunts automatically, but he doesn’t have to – Frank let Bob feel the initial impact but now he weighs nothing, is virtually air on Bob’s shoulders.   
  
“Tally ho,” Frank says against Bob’s ear. “To work.”  
  
Bob turns a little, catching a glimpse of a pale cheekbone and a tired fan of eyelashes before Frank tucks his face against the back of Bob’s neck. “I’m going, I’m going,” Bob assures the both of them out loud.   
  
He locks the door and walks to the car, Frank still hanging tight on his back.

  
*****  
  
  
“Answer your door,” Frank murmurs.   
  
Bob ignores him in favor of sliding a hand underneath the hem of Frank’s t-shirt. Frank squirms. He actually sounds the tiniest bit breathless when he repeats it: “Answer your door, don’t be an asshole.”  
  
“Frank.” Bob has stilled his hand and is staring down at Frank, whose eyes look calmly closed, but his lashes are throwing jittery shadows over his cheeks.  
  
“I know,” Frank says without opening his eyes. “This is – fuck, this feels good. And fucked up. But good.”  
  
“Like what?” Bob asks softly.   
  
“Not like being turned on or anything like that. Just, the fact that I can feel it.” Frank blinks his eyes open. “The fact that I can feel it at all.”  
  
Bob starts moving his hand again, running a flat palm over the middle of Frank’s ribcage, then back down to rub at his hipbone. True to his words, Frank doesn’t look turned on – just blissed out, mouth slightly open with a tinge of a smile at the corners.   
  
Another succession of knocks rattle the door, and it sounds like someone’s about to put their fist through it.   
  
“Dude, someone wants to kick your ass or something,” Frank says, lifting his head up a little.   
  
“If someone does, it’s your job to protect me,” Bob replies. He withdraws his hand and gets up to answer the door.  
  
He blinks when he sees who had knocked. It’s an old lady, holding onto the rolled-over top of a paper bag with both hands. She looks familiar in a way that nags at Bob, and he tries to place her face against templates in his mind. Did he pass her at the supermarket a lot? Or maybe she took walks around the block where he lived?   
  
“Can I help you?” he tries.  
  
“Hello young man,” she croaks, looking slightly over Bob’s shoulder instead of at his face. Maybe she was partially blind, he thinks, and with a flash of abrupt clarity, he realizes who she is.   
  
“You’re the one who was at the hospital,” he states blankly. “You’re the one who – with the glasses, and you kept looking at me – what the  _fuck_.”  
  
“Long time no see,” she replies, still not looking at Bob’s face.   
  
And from behind him, Frank mumbles, “Holy shit.”  
  
“Holy shit is right,” she agrees.   
  
Bob slowly turns so that his back is against the door and he can see the both of them. In that instant, there’s a slight shimmer, like a haze of heat, and the old lady isn’t there anymore. Instead it’s a guy about Bob’s age, with unsettlingly blue eyes and a puff of brown hair.  
  
“Jesse,” Frank gapes.   
  
Jesse grins toothily. He finally looks at Bob and sticks out a hand. “Hey, nice to meet you. I’m Fate.”  
  
“What the hell are you doing here?” Frank asks with wide eyes.   
  
When Bob can’t snap himself out of it enough to shake Jesse’s hand, Jesse shrugs and uses it to point at the sky; all three of them follow the line of his finger and tilt their heads back to look up. “They know something’s up,” he says. “You’ve been causing a fucking ruckus, Iero.”  
  
  
*  
  
  
Jesse is a messy eater.   
  
“Oh my god,” he moans into a handful of fries, biting them so that the insides bulge out in pockets of soft white. “I’ve missed this.”  
  
Because Bob already has a bad track record at asking useful questions during times like these, he has no qualms about vocalizing what he’s most curious about: “You can eat?”  
  
“I can do whatever the fuck I want,” Jesse says, punctuating this statement by stuffing more fries into his mouth. Bob can’t stop watching Jesse in strange fascination.  
  
“He’s corporeal now, he can eat. Also, he’s kind of developed a big head after all these years controlling people’s destinies,” Frank explains. He directs his next words at Jesse. “Have we talked about what you’re doing here yet?”  
  
Bob practically holds his fucking breath. Loud, squishy sounds of chewing are the only response for a while, until Jesse finally says, “I’m just here to see to some things. Run of the mill stuff. Also, I’m supposed to give you a reprimand for slacking on the job. Like I'm some kind of messenger boy, sheesh. ”   
  
The tension in Frank’s limbs seems to abate a bit and Bob finds himself similarly relieved, because Frank doesn’t have to tell him that Fate finding out about this interdimensional tryst thing would probably not be good.   
  
And then all that goes to hell when Jesse scoffs, “Shit, you guys. Come on, did you really think I didn’t know? I’m here to bust your asses, obviously.” He shakes his head. “I have to say, I’m surprised that you made it this long. Pretty smooth.”  
  
It’s a while before Bob finds his voice, and even then, the only thing he’s able to say is, “Um.” After all this time of not talking about Frank to anyone, Bob finds it almost impossible to process the sudden candidness of Jesse. Of motherfucking  _Fate_.   
  
Frank squirms uncomfortably as Jesse goes on: “Exciting, though, I have to admit. I’m just going about my business as usual, you know, a few major clusterfucks here and there, but nothing to write home about. Until I start getting little blips on my radar that I ignore, but then there are notices about so-and-so in the hospital, or someone who’s supposed to be a groundbreaking researcher walking around with aspirations of being a professional cave-diver instead.”  
  
Chunks of red get blotted all over the table as Jesse rips open several ketchup packets. “All classic signs of unapproved injuries and misguided decisions, which are usually the fault of some fuck up on the watcher’s part. So I come check it out and see the cause of it.” He kind of wags his finger at the two of them as he munches on an onion ring. “You crossed the divide, Frank. That takes balls.”  
  
Even though Jesse’s all but said that he knows everything that’s been going on, Bob’s still stuck on the first part. “You put some of your charges in the hospital?” he nervously asks Frank. “When?”  
  
“That morning when you forgot to set your alarm. I didn’t want to leave,” Frank mumbles, and then, before Bob has time to react, he says in a louder voice, “Listen, hey, you’ve been around since the beginning, almost. You’ve got to know about some loopholes, right?”   
  
Jesse’s expression softens at this. He looks a little surprised, too. “Frank,” he begins.  
  
“I want to lose my wings,” Frank says promptly.   
  
This time it’s Bob who mutters his name, in a harsher tone. Only after that does he even consider what it means, or could mean – Frank wants to lose his fucking wings. With a flash of anger, Bob realizes that Frank has probably _been_  wanting to, which would explain that fucked up episode in the kitchen. Not that Bob’s opposed to the general idea, but he’s not exactly on board for what it could take to get there, and he’s really not fucking on board with the consequences that Frank’s attempt had hinted at.   
  
The three of them sit without saying anything for a while, Frank’s declaration still hanging in the air. Bob thinks of the unflinching way that Frank had said it; how he’d stared directly at Jesse without backing down. There’s a half-moon shaped nail mark that’s scratched into the table surface and Bob concentrates on it, running his finger over the groove again and again.  
  
“You’ve already had your chance at life,” Jesse finally says in a low voice, his eyes flashing to a darker blue, all traces of his easygoing manner disappeared. He glances at Bob, as if to gauge his proximity to the conversation, to see if he heard or not. “Frank. You know the rules.”   
  
Frank looks up and meets Jesse’s gaze. Even Bob feels the unspoken connection – he has no idea what’s going on, but he knows that it’s more than just two guys having a silent argument. The room feels too full with the three of them, like the walls will warp outward and collapse under the pressure at any moment.  
  
Oddly enough, Jesse cracks a tiny smile, almost like he’s relenting a little. “A watcher falling for his charge,” he states. “Who would have thought.”  
  
“So you’re saying this hasn’t happened before?” Frank tries.   
  
“I’m not saying that.”  
  
“So this  _has_  happened before.”  
  
“Didn’t say that either.”  
  
“Fucking shit, Jesse. Come on.” Frank pushes the brim of his hat up with an irritated flick of his wrist and rubs at his forehead.   
  
“Should you really be worrying about the history of things like this? If you’re a unique little snowflake? Really? Let me lay this out for you if you don’t get it.” Jesse leans forward, using his forearms to support his weight and smearing some ketchup on his sleeves in the process. “You crossed the divide,” he enunciates carefully before sitting back. “That’s like breaking the number one rule of  _Fight Club_.”  
  
Bob finds himself asking, “Didn’t you know this was going to happen? With you being Fate and all. I mean, I don’t know, that’s just what I would have assumed.”  
  
“Listen, kid, don’t bother trying to bait me. You don’t get the privilege of knowing that kind of stuff,” Jesse dismisses.   
  
“He’s kind of an asshole,” Bob tells Frank, whose lips immediately quirk up into a barely suppressed smile, and fuck, it’d be so easy to pretend this conversation is a stupid joke if it isn’t for the way Frank is sitting stiffly in his chair, just watching Jesse like he doesn’t know what'll happen next. It’s the kind of uncertainty that Bob isn’t used to seeing on Frank.  
  
Again, the only audible sound is of food squelching around in Jesse’s mouth until Frank finally sighs. “Okay, I’ll bite.” When Jesse gives him a questioning look, he asks, “Am I being pulled?”  
  
“When,” corrects Jesse thickly. “The question should be  _when_  are you being pulled.”  
  
“So I’m being pulled,” Frank reiterates.   
  
Jesse seems to back down even more. “Frank,” is all he says again, and Frank’s gaze drops down to the table. For some reason, Bob finds himself getting really fucking pissed off just sitting there and watching them talk in circles about this shit, and also to compensate for Frank’s uncharacteristic meekness.  
  
“That’s not fucking cool,” Bob says hotly. “Nobody’s even keeping an eye on either of us and now you want to backpedal your way out?”  
  
“Please, you’re the ones that made all the decisions here,” Jesse says with a new, sharp edge to his words. “We like to give you guys – human or otherwise – some credit and assume that you’ll intuitively know the rules when it comes to stuff like this, but I guess that’s just too much to ask.”  
  
Frank’s voice is barely audible. “When?”  
  
“I don’t know. Honestly.” Jesse sighs. He leans back against his chair and slumps against the silence before tossing his balled up napkin onto the table with sudden fervor. “Jesus. Okay, look at me.”   
  
To Bob’s surprise, Jesse is directing the order to him. “What? Why?”  
  
“Gotta have a good look at you to calibrate your capabilities.” Jesse tilts his head to the side and studies Bob, who, against his better instincts, keeps eye contact.   
  
Up on the wall, the second hand of the clock ticks at a steady pace. Jesse blinks slowly and rarely, which gives Bob the compulsion to blink more often, and the world outside seems to be on mute as an unnerving tingling starts to crackle at Bob’s fingertips. He closes his hands into fists a few times to get rid of it, but it travels all the way up his arms and into his head before disappearing abruptly, like a variation on a really shitty high.  
  
Jesse crooks up the corner of his mouth. “Huh. That’s a good consolation prize, I guess,” he muses to himself.   
  
Then he resumes eating.   
  
“Jesse,” Frank prods with a tinge of exasperation.  
  
Bob’s heart starts pounding noticeably as Jesse swallows and sits forward. “Okay. He’s marked,” he says conspiratorially.   
  
“I’m marked?” Bob repeats at the same time Frank’s mouth drops open a little. He says, “He’s  _marked_? As a – ”  
  
“ – Potential,” Jesse fills in.   
  
“I’m what?” Bob repeats, looking back and forth between the two of them, but they aren’t paying him any attention.   
  
“That’s fucking – what?” Frank asks disbelievingly. “Are you serious?”  
  
“Yeah, ‘cause I lie all the fucking time, right?” Jesse turns to Bob. “Don’t complain about your papa bear nature anymore. It might come in handy someday.”  
  
“What the hell does that mean?”  
  
Jesse rolls his eyes. “Figure it out. I drop mysterious hints, I don’t tell you the whole story complete with footnotes.”  
  
“A Potential,” Bob says out loud, as if it’ll help him understand what the fuck is going on. It doesn’t. He figures if they’re not freaking out, then he shouldn’t freak out, but it’s fucking struggle.   
  
Frank still looks confused and a little suspicious. “But that’s not my thing. I – I don’t get assignments like those.”  
  
“I guess you got a silent promotion or whatever. Why do you think you’ve always felt a stronger connection with him than with other charges?”  
  
“I just thought that was because – ” and Frank flicks a glance at Bob, shifting in his chair a little. Bob is becoming more stunned by the second, listening to most of the conversation fly by over his head.  
  
“Not that you aren’t overly sensitive in the first place,” Jesse continues. “You’re a watcher, aren’t you supposed to be dead to emotion and everything?” The way he says it, Bob can’t tell if he’s joking or not.   
  
Somewhere off in the distance, there are a series of cars honking at each other. Jesse says, “Oops, that’s the signal.”  
  
He half-rises in his chair and starts gathering up all his garbage. Bob and Frank both gape up at him silently, which he seems to take in stride. It’s only when Jesse starts winding his scarf around his neck that Frank stutters out, “One last time. Jesse, if there’s anything – ”  
  
“No can do. It’ll happen.” The answer is short, but Jesse doesn’t say it meanly. He scrapes his chair back and stands up all the way. “Who knows when, though? Those guys never learn how to get their shit together. Anyway, I gotta jet and make sure this fire doesn’t get too out of control.”  
  
Bob automatically stands up as well, but Frank stays seated, watching as Jesse wipes his hands on another cheap napkin. “Sorry, kid,” Jesse says to him, and he sounds genuine. “If I could change it, I would.”  
  
“Yeah,” Frank replies roughly. “Yeah, I know.”  
  
Some part of Bob’s brain kicks into gear and his feet go on autopilot, walking Jesse to the door as Jesse delicately puts on his old lady glasses. He studies Bob again, but casually this time. “You know it’s been exactly a year since that night, right?” Jesse asks him. “Happy fucking death day.”  
  
He shifts his gaze over Bob’s shoulder and raises his voice. “It’s go time.”   
  
And with that, Jesse steps out and starts hobbling toward the stairs. Bob stands at the doorway and watches him go. He doesn’t have to turn around to see that Frank is gone.  
  
  
*  
  
  
The minute hand of the clock on the kitchen wall has been struggling to move past the ‘5’ for at least an hour now. Bob tries to remember the last time he changed the batteries in that thing. Or it could be a consequence of having Fate stop by his fucking apartment. He stares at it anyway, keeping his feet propped up on the coffee table and lolling his head on the back of the couch. It still smells a bit like smoke and burnt wood. He’d peeked outside a while ago and seen the windshields of parked cars all covered with grey ashes.  
  
The clock is still stuck at the ‘5’ when movement in the hallway catches his attention, and Frank emerges just as Bob lets his head roll slightly to the side.   
  
After a brief pause, Bob dumbly asks, “How was the fire?”  
  
Frank leans against the wall and shifts his wings, covering the face of the clock in shadow. “Handful of burns, nothing too bad though.” He looks at Bob. “You okay?”  
  
“Yeah. Question,” Bob says. He twitches his hands a little and struggles to sit up, but his body is slow to respond. “What the fuck just happened?”  
  
“One of my charges was in the building,” Frank says, but Bob cuts in.   
  
“I’m not talking about that.” The couch squeaks as he gets up and tries to shake some feeling back into his legs. He walks into the kitchen and back out again, then makes a circle around the coffee table. Frank watches him the whole time. “Okay, seriously. Jesse said I’m a Potential. Capital P, I can fucking hear it. What the hell does it mean?”  
  
Frank makes a weird face, like he’s stretching out kinks in his jaw muscles. “You’re a Potential,” he repeats.   
  
“Yeah, I got that,” Bob replies irritably. “What does it  _mean_? Just answer the question, Frank. Please. I mean, I got the sense that it’s not a really terrible thing, because yeah, the word ‘potential’ is kind of good, isn’t it? But I could be wrong, because what the fuck do I know, right?” he rambles a bit.  
  
“Bob, okay, hold on. I’m trying to think of...” Frank trails off and bites his lip. Finally, he says, “Potentials.”  
  
“Potentials,” Bob prompts.   
  
“We – watchers, I mean – we all start out as Potentials when we’re living,” Frank says slowly. “Potential watchers, that’s what we’re marked as. We don’t know about it, of course, but then when we die…”   
  
He stops speaking as Bob begins to understand. “You can guess the rest, right?” Frank asks in a hesitant tone, hovering a hand above Bob’s elbow.   
  
“Okay, yeah. Jesus,” Bob exhales. He can’t help glancing down at his palms, as if suddenly it’ll manifest itself in some concrete way. “Jesus, I – so I have the potential to become one.”  
  
Frank is looking at him fondly, head tilted a bit to the side, like the new angle helps him see Bob better. “You could, yes.”  
  
“Fuck,” Bob declares. “Shit.” He takes a few deep breaths. “Sorry, like. I’m sure it’s not some huge honor or anything. Millions of people are probably marked, right? But it’s still kind of blowing my mind.”  
  
“I know,” Frank says softly. He offers up a cautious smile. “It isn’t a sure destiny, it never is, but that’s what I was talking about when I said you had to make certain choices to get to things.”  
  
It’s like all that’s ever happened to Bob is coming to a head right here, at this moment – his limbs feel heavy, tingling with the memory of every injury he’s gotten over the years. His gums light up with a phantom ache, and all the black eyes and bruises he’s had seem to be pounding blood into his head. All the fights he’s gotten in, both because of his own doing and in place of other people, start blending together in his mind, and he breathes in sharply.   
  
“Bob, are you,” Frank starts.   
  
Bob opens his eyes, not realizing that he’d closed them in the first place. The feeling slowly fades, leaving a weird calmness in its wake, although the pulsing in his head remains. “Yeah,” he tries after a moment. “Yeah, I’m okay. I just have to – lie down, I think.”  
  
He turns down the hallway, but Frank tugs on his elbow to prevent him from going anywhere. “I just,” Frank starts, his eyes flickering down to where his hand is curled over Bob’s skin. Something shifts; Frank isn’t really smiling anymore, and Bob is having trouble getting words out.  
  
“What?” Bob manages.  
  
“I couldn’t not try,” Frank says softly. “Before, with the wings. You know?”  
  
“I know. Hey.” Bob thinks of the red again, and how Frank had looked when he’d landed in the kitchen. He inexplicably thinks about the first time he’d seen Frank, when Frank had introduced himself with ease while looking hungover as all fuck. For a split second, the world seems to make sense to him – everything’s happening synchronously, with or without reason, but it fades away in the next second and it’s just this again, just him and Frank, Frank with his fingers curled around Bob’s arm.  
  
“You also know that I probably have to blow this joint pretty soon, right?” Frank jokes, and the words come light and easy but he’s always been shit at keeping his expressions in check. Right now his mouth is in a solemn line, eyes hooded and at half-mast as he stares at the carpet.  
  
“I think we always knew that,” Bob says slowly. “On some level.”  
  
Frank rolls his eyes a little, as if to say,  _duh_. “And – ”  
  
“Yeah,” Bob cuts in, even though he has no idea what Frank was going to say – he just knows that his response would have been the same, no matter what.   
  
“Smart ass,” Frank says, but he looks up. “You think you can handle life without me?” He lifts the corners of his mouth and Bob feels another pang, a sharp catch of breath like his lungs aren’t filling up quite right. “I was just kidding, don’t answer that,” Frank says quickly. He shifts his hands to fist at the front of Bob’s shirt, then presses his face against Bob’s collarbone. The knit of his hat scratches against the side of Bob’s jaw, and Bob turns into it.  
  
“I just don’t know,” Frank says eventually.   
  
“Who does.” Bob touches the worn in material of Frank’s sweater, where the fabric is starting to pill around the collar and at the elastic of the sleeves. A Potential. He feels like it's something fragile to carry around, like if he takes a wrong step, it'll break into dust. A thin string of nervousness runs through his muscles, but it's not all bad, he doesn't think. He doesn't fucking know what to think, but maybe that's not all bad either.  
  
Frank murmurs something into Bob's shirt, too soft to be audible, and Bob doesn't press. Instead, he briefly kisses the top of Frank’s head and listens to the silence.


	7. Epilogue

**EPILOGUE**

 

“Watch the Marshall!” Brian yelps, but Bob’s already moving under it and steadying the head from teetering off the cab. “Christ. Thank you, Bob.”

“Anything to cut down on the lectures about money-saving and ‘less destruction, more construction’,” Bob quotes, raising his voice in imitation. 

Brian’s face reddens. “Have you been looking through my notes again?’

“What?” Bob feigns nonchalance and continues clearing up backstage. He hears Brian making threats about some motherfucking salary cuts and people having no fucking respect for each other anymore, but he knows it’s just for show. 

Stacks of recycling bins are lined up on the back wall and Bob takes them outside to dump them, like he always does. Over the rush of clanking cans and bottles, he can hear laughter and the occasional rumble of a voice, probably some of the last patrons from the show just hanging around. It’d been a good show and a good audience, which are pretty much the only two things that Bob can ever ask for. 

“Bob!” Lindsey calls as Bob passes by the bar to shut down all the soundboards. “We’re all meeting up at the Viper Lounge tomorrow night, and Alicia’s really going to kill you this time if you don’t go. The band’s supposed to be really good.”

“If they’re really good, then why aren’t they playing here?” comes Brian’s voice, faint from backstage. 

Both of them ignore him. Bob concentrates on flicking switches and pushing buttons until all the lights die down and the bright glow of red power buttons fade away. 

“Bob.” Lindsey sounds amused. “I know you heard me.”

“I know you know,” Bob says without looking up, bending down and pretending to secure some plugs.

“So? Viper Lounge, I’m not going to let this go, you haven’t been out with us in years,” Lindsey says exaggeratedly. “ _Years_ , Bob. I don’t even know what you look like anymore.”

Bob makes a little lip-fart, which makes Lindsey laugh loudly. “I could take a portrait and frame it for you,” he suggests. He peeks up and sees Lindsey with a rag in one hand and the other resting on her hip. Combined with the head tilt, it’s a classic position of letting Bob know that she really isn’t going to let this go. 

He straightens up and relents. “Okay, okay. I’m there.”

“Yes!” Lindsey exclaims. She throws the rag on the counter and comes over to put him into a pseudo-headlock, which he lets her do. “Excellent. I always knew you were intimidated by me. You want to invite anyone else?”

“Nah, I’ll just show up on my own. Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay.” Lindsey beams at him with her dark hair flopping over her face, and on a strange impulse, Bob pulls her into a hug. Nowadays shit just happens like that sometimes, like he’s been floating along with the tide with his head above water, but an unexpected wave drags him under. 

“Whoa, hey,” Lindsey says in a surprised voice, rubbing his back automatically, like it’s instinct. “Are you okay?”

Thankfully, the moment passes. Bob pictures his head breaking the surface again; he pulls back and lets her go. “Yeah, you know, sometimes just keeping up the mask of masculinity is too much for me and I lapse into this thing where I need to give someone a hug or else – ”

“Ugh, god.” She rolls her eyes but smiles at the same time. “I’m sorry I asked.”

“I’m good, though,” he assures her. Maybe if he repeats it, he’ll believe himself. “I’m good,” he says once more.

 

*

 

As soon as he locks the car and checks his overflowing mailbox, a flood of exhaustion hits his body all at once, saturating his limbs with a heavy weight. Without bothering to empty the mailbox, he relocks it and rubs his eyes as he slowly makes his way up the stairs. When he gets to his place, he sees through the window that the living room is dark and there’s no light leaking through from the hallway or the kitchen, either. 

Bob takes a deep breath, opens the door, and is immediately startled by the lump on the couch. 

“Hi,” Frank greets. 

“Hi,” Bob says. He shuts the door with his foot, effectively cutting off any light from the streetlamps except for the soft glow through the curtains. “What the hell are you doing in the dark?”

“Trying to see if I can sleep,” Frank explains, then adds, unnecessarily, “I can’t.”

“The more you know. But hey, you’re still here.” A tired exhale pushes out from Bob’s lungs when he plops down onto the couch, right by Frank’s feet. Sometimes they just sit like this for a while, with Bob well aware of the possibility that Frank might suddenly disappear and not come back. Sometimes Bob gets home and goes to sleep without a word, because there are always some bands that are full of assholes and he’s tired and pissed off from catering to them all day. Sometimes they stay up all night and watch syndicated television. Sometimes Bob goes out and gets drunk and squints awake to Frank poking at his temple. 

“I’m still here,” Frank affirms. He runs his toes over Bob’s forearm and giggles when Bob captures his ankle in a tight grip. “Ow, Bob. Ow, my foot.”

“Shut up,” Bob tells him. He goes to grab for Frank’s wrist when Frank starts to giggle and blinks out, making Bob get a grip full of air. There’s a familiar noise coming from the bedroom, though. 

Bob rolls his eyes and gets up. “You’re supposed to stop laughing when you do that,” he calls as he walks. “Otherwise it sort of defeats the purpose.”

“Maybe I wanted the purpose defeated, did you ever think about that?” Frank says from the bed, where he’s lying on his stomach with his hands pillowed beneath his cheek. 

“Ugh, stop talking.” Moving feels like the biggest hurdle in the world. It takes all the energy Bob has to step out of his pants and toe off his socks, leaving everything crumpled on the floor. “You’re annoying when you talk. Why can’t you just be a silent, pretty face?”

“You like it when people talk,” Frank informs him, rolling over to make room. Bob starts to say something in response, but it dissolves into a yawn as soon as his head hits the pillow.

“Oh, tell me more,” Frank says brightly, curling up next to him. 

“Gonna fucking kill you,” Bob mumbles. 

Frank laughs a little. He looks so relaxed and happy that Bob has to close his eyes for a moment. 

When he opens them again, he realizes with a jolt that he’d actually fallen asleep. Frank is lying on his side now, with his back to Bob, holding onto the hand that Bob has slung over Frank’s waist. There’s no way of knowing what time it is without turning over and blinking at the clock, but Bob doesn’t want to move. All he knows is that it’s the slow pocket of time in the night, when there are no cars passing by on the road and the streetlights stay a constant green and even insomniacs have turned their TVs off to try and sleep. 

The heater clicks off, leaving a bubble of silence. Bob can hear his own breathing and not much else – the silence prickles at his ears and he finds himself straining to hear any noise at all as he tries to keep his body from getting attenuated with the feeling of Frank pressed up against him on his side. Bob shifts every now and then, just for the hell of it; he’s strangely awake now, and he doesn’t know if he’ll even be able to fall asleep again but it’s worth trying. Cold air starts to seep in through the window and leaves a foggy layer on the glass, and Bob huddles under his comforter while pulling Frank closer. As he often does these days, he wonders if maybe he’ll wake up on his own, in the middle of the bed, to an empty apartment. 

He forces his eyes open and stares at the ceiling and starts to wonder what’ll happen tomorrow, or the next day, or the next month; in ten years, or even thirty. He wonders what’ll happen once Frank is actually gone.

Maybe he’ll quit the job at the club and move on to another one – but he doesn’t think he’ll be able to do that to Brian. Maybe he’ll move out of his apartment. Maybe he’ll grow his hair out like a fucking hippie or something. He could go back to school – he’s always wanted to get into electrical engineering. Can’t be that different from messing around with all the circuitboards he’s worked on. 

The slow flow of thoughts comes to a stop as Frank turns over onto his stomach. He presses half his face into the pillow and looks at Bob with one squinty eye. Bob can’t tell if he knows that Bob’s been awake for a while. 

“Duty calls,” Frank murmurs. 

“Go for it,” Bob says roughly, lifting his arm up and away from Frank’s waist. Frank scrunches his face up into what could pass for a smile; before he leaves, he runs a hand from Bob’s jaw to up over his temple, and then he’s gone. 

Bob settles his hand on the now empty side of the bed, which is cold from lack of body heat, and closes his eyes. Mindless possibilities keep drifting through his mind, multiplying and branching out, buoying him towards sleep. Maybe he’ll actually save enough money to buy a house outside of the city. Or maybe he’ll stay in the city and join a band, play drums for the first time in years. Or like, pick up a new instrument – have Ray teach him guitar or something. Maybe Ray will get married to that chick he’s been seeing for years and Bob will be the weird pseudo-uncle who sneaks their kid out for shows. Maybe he’ll date too, or get married, or maybe he’ll grow old alone and wear shorts and sandals all the time and spend his days playing bingo and trying to cheat for the rest of his life. Maybe he’ll go to sleep one day and pass from one place to another, quiet and unnoticed, easier than he could have ever imagined.

And maybe Frank will smile and say, "Hey. Interested in earning some wings?"


End file.
